Wild Horse Hunters, 1913 by Charles Marion Russell Thank You Card

Charles Marion Russell - Wild Horse Hunters, 1913. Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926), also known as C. M. Russell, Charlie Russell, and "Kid" Russell, was an American artist of the American Old West. He created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Native Americans, and landscapes set in the western United States and in Alberta, Canada, in addition to bronze sculptures. He is known as "the cowboy artist". During Russell's time, small bands of wild horses, each dominated by a stallion, roamed throughout Montana and other parts of the West. Here, a group of riders have cornered one such band at the end of a dry gully. As the riders converge on the frightened horses, one has flung his lariat across the gully to rope the stallion, which desperately tries to scramble up the side of the gully with the mares and colts. The rider has wrapped his lariat around the saddle horn and deftly swings his weight off the saddle to counterbalance the pull of the taut rope.