3 Charles Russell Books

THREE CHARLES M. RUSSELL WESTERN ART BOOKS - McCRACKEN 1957, PETERSON LEGACY, AND THE WESTERN ART OF C.M. RUSSELL Three illustrated books on Charles M. Russell, the Montana cowboy artist whose paintings of cowboys, horses, Plains Indians, and open-range life are among the most collected Western art in the country. The group includes the classic 1957 Doubleday biography and picture gallery by Harold McCracken in its original pictorial dust jacket, the large-format Peterson Legacy reference volume on Russell's printed and published works, and an oversize Ballantine paperback picture book edited by Lanning Aldrich, all three loaded with full-color plates. This is a good working reference set for a Russell collector, a Western art dealer, or anyone who wants large reproductions for framing or study, and it fits well with the Western and Oklahoma material elsewhere in this sale. All three show shelf wear, the McCracken jacket is chipped and torn along the bottom edge, and the Legacy jacket is soiled with old label residue, all detailed below. Sold as a lot of three books, two hardcover and one oversize paperback. Description THE CHARLES M. RUSSELL BOOK by Harold McCracken - hardcover with the original pictorial dust jacket, jacket printed in orange and white on black over a full-color battle scene, with jacket text reading By Harold McCracken, author of Frederic Remington and Portrait of the Old West and A biography and picture gallery of the famous cowboy artist with 35 full color illustrations and more than 150 black and white reproductions, and Russell's skull-and-signature device printed at the right. Interior shows blue-gray endpapers, full-page color plates facing letterpress text, and chapter openings with pen-and-ink vignettes, the page photographed being CHAPTER VIII, One Who "Belonged." Measures approximately 12-3/4 to 13 inches tall by roughly 10-1/2 to 11 inches wide. Charles M. Russell LEGACY by Larry Len Peterson - large heavy hardcover in a cream dust jacket printed with a ghosted Silver Dollar, Great Falls, Montana image behind the title. Interior pages photographed show reference-style layouts of Russell book covers, title pages, and printed ephemera reproduced in color with descriptive catalog entries, alongside full-page color reproductions of paintings. Measures approximately 12 to 12-1/2 inches tall by roughly 11 to 11-1/2 inches wide. The Western Art of Charles M. Russell, Edited by Lanning Aldrich - oversize landscape-format paperback picture book, cover priced $5.95 with a Ballantine imprint and stock number printed along the front cover edge. Interior is a gallery of full-page color plates with caption and credit lines, examples photographed including FOLLOWING THE BUFFALO RUN courtesy of the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, a night camp scene, and a firelit interior scene. Back cover carries a full-color plate captioned CHARLES M. RUSSELL AND HIS FRIENDS, The Mackay Collection, Courtesy Montana Historical Society, Helena, Montana. Measures approximately 10 inches tall by roughly 11 inches wide. In every tape-measure photograph the hook plate is resting on the carpet off the edge of the book rather than hooked on it, and in the height shots the tape lies on top of the closed book, so all figures are close estimates. Bidders should verify all dimensions from the photographs. Attribution note Charles Marion Russell, 1864 to 1926, worked as a wrangler and night herder in Montana before making his living as a painter, sculptor, and illustrator of the northern plains, and his work is held today by the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, the Montana Historical Society, and the Amon Carter Museum, all of which are credited in the plate captions in these volumes. Harold McCracken's The Charles M. Russell Book: The Life and Work of the Cowboy Artist was published by Doubleday of Garden City, New York in 1957, according to Wikipedia's bibliography of McCracken and multiple bookseller cataloging records including AbeBooks. Larry Len Peterson's Charles M. Russell, Legacy: Printed and Published Works of Montana's Cowboy Artist was published in 1999 out of Helena, Montana in association with the C.M. Russell Museum, per Encyclopedia.com's entry on Peterson and a Great Plains Quarterly review archived at the University of Nebraska. The Aldrich volume is a Ballantine Books oversize paperback carrying a cover price of $5.95, which places it in the mid-1970s, though the copyright page was not photographed and no printing or edition is claimed. Edition, printing, and first-issue status are not claimed for any of the three, and identification is offered as the consignor's photo-based opinion and is not guaranteed. Bid on the items as pictured. Condition Used books in fair to good condition, sold as-is. The McCracken dust jacket is the roughest item in the lot, with heavy chipping, tearing, and loss along the bottom edge of both the front and back panels, edge wear and small tears at the top