Running Buffalo 1918

Charles M. Russell painted "Running Buffalo" sometime before 1926, probably in oil. The painting feels like it was made from life, or at least from memory. The thing I notice most here is the dust. Look at that ground, all golden and brown. Russell is really working with a limited palette to capture the light of the West. You can almost feel the heat radiating off the canvas. The paint seems thin and transparent in places, like he's staining the canvas, and then thick and opaque in others, building up the forms of the buffalo and the riders. Take the rider, center-left, for example. The way he leans forward, bow drawn, is a great gesture, capturing a moment of tension and release. Russell is trying to capture a true moment of action. It reminds me a little of Delacroix and those Romantic history paintings, but set in the American West. Ultimately, Russell's work is his own, a celebration of movement and the rugged beauty of the American West.