CHARLES MARION RUSSELL | LEWIS AND CLARK MEETING THE MANDANS (LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION)

Frederic G. & Ginger K. Renner, Paradise Valley, Arizona

Kennedy Galleries, New York

Walter Reed Bimson, Phoenix, Arizona, 1955 (acquired from the above)

Valley National Bank of Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona

Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2004

"Striking Pictures of Frontier Life," Field and Stream, vol. 3, no. 4, July 1898, illustrated p. XIX

Western Field and Stream, vol. 2, no. 8, January 1898, halftone illustrated p. 216

Harold McCracken, The Charles M. Russell Book, Garden City, New York, 1957, p. 183, illustrated

John Taliaferro, Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America’s Cowboy Artist, Norman, Oklahoma, 2003, p. 115

Great Falls, Montana, C.M. Russell Gallery, Centennial Year, 1864-1964, April 1964, no. 227, illustrated n.p.

Tucson, Arizona, Tucson Art Center, Arts Collected By Banks in Arizona, October 1966, n.p.

Tucson, Arizona, University of Arizona Museum of Art, The West and Walter Bimson: Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, 1971, pp. 168, 221, illustrated p. 144

Tucson, Arizona, Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona Collects the West, October-December 1983, n.p.

By the time Charles Marion Russell painted Lewis and Clark Meeting the Mandans (Lewis and Clark Expedition) in 1897, he was reaching the peak of his technical skill. The title of the work denotes the first American expedition across the western portion of the United States by Captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend, Lieutenant William Clark. The Lewis and Clark Expedition, which began in 1804 and lasted through 1806, was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson shortly after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The excursion aimed to explore and map the newly acquired territory, as well as to find a route across the western part of the continent that would allow for American expansion prior to the British and Europeans. A secondary goal of the journey, economic in nature, was to establish trade with Native American tribes. In the present work, Russell portrays several members of the Mandan tribe, a powerful tribe of the Great Plains.