Buffalo Herd at Bay 1901

Charles Russell made this watercolor painting in 1901. The layering in this piece is so clever. Look at the way the colors bleed into one another, creating these soft, blurred edges. This whole piece is about process and how color can shape an image, even when the brush strokes are barely there. Russell uses this watery paint to show us the hard, physical reality of the buffalos and the landscape. Notice the rocky textures and the way the buffalos bunch together, a mass of brown fur against the encroaching wolves. It’s not about perfection, it’s about the feeling. The colors are muted, earthy tones, but there's this vibrant pink that highlights the top of the mountain in a beautiful wash of light, as if it were painted in a dream. Russell’s work reminds me a little of Frederic Remington, another artist who captured the West. They both leave us with a feeling of the West as a place of both harshness and beauty.