Life Saver 1910

Charles M. Russell made this image of a man rescuing a woman from an overturned horse-drawn carriage, with a newfangled automobile approaching, sometime around 1910. Painted in watercolor, the scene is rendered in shades of brown, blue, and yellow. I imagine Russell dabbing and brushing, a touch of blue here to suggest a shadow, a stroke of brown there to define the muscles of the horses straining to run uphill. What was he thinking as he mixed his colors? Probably about ways of life, the old versus the new. The woman is falling from the carriage in a swoon, but the man is strong and determined and their escape is imminent. It’s like a moment frozen in time, filled with drama and a touch of humor. Painters are always in conversation with each other across time, and you know, you can almost see echoes of Delacroix or Gericault in the way the horses seem to surge forward, wild and untamed. It's a reminder that painting is an embodied expression, embracing ambiguity and multiple meanings.