Happy Birthday Charlie Russell!
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Painting by Charlie Russell titled " Deer at Lake McDonald".
The photograph of this painting by Charles Russell is called Deer Drinking at Lake McDonald. It comes from a wonderful book entitled "Artists in Glacier". For anyone interested in the people who have made Glacier National Park their backdrop for paintings, this is the book to have.
As for Charlie Russell, most of his work in Glacier came from the fact that he had a cedar log cabin close to the mouth of where McDonald Creek dumps out of Lake McDonald. The cabin is just a half mile or so from Apgar and as a result most of Russell's paintings of that part of Glacier were painted from his beach. To get the same scene that he was looking at, go to the Village Inn in Apgar or to cabin 6 of the Apgar Village Lodge and you will be looking up the lake seeing just what Charlie Russell was painting for many years when he was in Glacier.
There is a myth that Charlie never finished a painting but in his log studio next to his home in Great Falls. That myth is just that, a myth. Russell had a wonderful and beautiful studio next to his cabin at Lake McDonald and finished many paintings there. If one was not completed when he finally headed back to Great Falls in the fall, he would take it with him and finish it in his Great Falls studio but many paintings were completed and signed right in Glacier National Park.
Russell was sort of fast and loose with his mountains. If the painting needed another peak, he would stick one in that did not belong there. As a result it is rather difficult to name the background peaks in some of Russell's Glacier Paintings.
In this painting, going from left to right, the first one you see sticking up is Mount Wilbur which is in the Swift current valley but able to be seen some places along Lake McDonald. Going from there we are looking at Mt. Cannon, Brown, the Little Matterhorn, Edwards and the tip of Gun sight. However, some mountains do not look in real life like they look in this painting.
Russell's Glacier National Park prints are in great demand. As the popularity of Glacier rises, the popularity of Russell's Glacier paintings rises too.
