Charles M. Russell: Merging Western Art with Impressionism

Spearing A Buffalo:

Art of The American West

The art of the American West has long been honored in the states whose history it records, but it hasn’t always been accepted in the larger art world. Thirty years ago, it was often seen as an out of touch genre, fed by a love of nostalgia and history. Today, it is slowly entering museums across the U.S. and the great works of the American Western artists are being recognized. Charles M. Russell was truly an artist of the American West. He created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Indians, and landscapes set in the western United States. Of Russell’s paintings, a large number of them depict Indians hunting buffalo. His painting, Spearing A Buffalo, finished in 1925, was one of the last pieces he completed. This piece, for Charles M. Russell, is unique because the theme of the painting is, of course, western and depicts an Indian spearing a buffalo as the main subject. However, the style strays away from what Russell typically does, which is more naturalistic, and demonstrates techniques used in impressionistic works. Spearing A Buffalo was a painting that honored the history of the “wild west” and, at the same time, hooked the larger art world with its new and diverse style of

Spearing a Buffalo was painted in1925 by and American painter: Charles M. Russell. The piece’s present location is at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Spearing a Buffalo depicts a western American landscape of sagebrush and foothills in the middle and foreground with a mountainous background. A Native American impales a buffalo with a long spear from atop his horse in the center of the painting as the focus and in the back we can see another Native American on his horse chasing the rest of the herd. Spearing a Buffalo creates a dynamic movement with its diagonal drawing lines and references to impressionism with its specific use of