Portrayal tells the life of CMR's wife

The old Faber Schoolhouse on the Great Northern Fairgrounds was full of people sitting in the old-style, classroom wooden desks Thursday night.

The overflow crowd was sitting in folding chairs along the side of the room, They were fanning themselves because of the stifling heat.

At the front, Mary Jane Bradbury from Humanities Montana was talking to the crowd, playing the role of Nancy Cooper Russell. Russell was the wife of famed Western painter Charles W. Russell.

After a rough childhood in Tennessee, Nancy Russell found herself in Helena, penniless. She befriended an influential family and met their friend, Charles Russell, who was at the beginning of his painting career.

This began one of Montana’s most famous love affairs-business relationships.

The amicable Charles Russell would agree to sell his paintings for far less than they were worth, Nancy said.

At the beginning of the marriage, Nancy explained what the relationship would be:

“You paint the paintings, and I will sell them,” she said.

With a depression going on, she said, a lot of people thought that the price of art should not increase like she was proposing.

But Nancy explained to Charles the law of supply and demand, People were paying the higher prices.

She was a tough business woman. One of her friends said that when she was wearing gloves “be they a set of velvet, cotton or wood, there was a set of brass knuckles under them.”

That kind of attitude was not expected of women in the early 20th century.

“A woman who is good at business will be called an awful lot of bad things,” she said.

She brought Charles on a trip to St. Louis, a city they thought was the end of the world. He had his first major art exhibition.

Before long, they were headed to New York City, talking to major at collectors and arranging big-time art shows.

She maintained her tough stand on the price of Charlie’s art.

“Charlie never liked New York City,” she said. “But I loved it.”

In those days, she said, Charlie did some of his best work.

She told stories about how he did some of his work, including the 25-foot wide picture that, to this day, adorns the wall behind the podium of the Montana State House Chambers.

Getting the painting in and out of Charlie’s studios was not easy, she said.

In Great Falls, she was the queen of the charity events. She could always raise money for any cause, though there was one that created trouble for her.

One of Charlie’s favorite projects was relief for the Chippewa Cree Tribe that at the time was wandering around Montana homeless.

Many settled in the Hill 57 area of Great Falls.

Concerned with what Charlie called the deplorable conditions they lived in, Nancy began raising funds to help them.

Many Great Falls residents said they would gladly help her out in any cause.

When “the fine maids of Great Falls” heard what the cause was they had a change of heart.

“They didn’t want their hard work and money going to help ‘those poor, dirty Indians,’” she said.

Eventually, the Russells moved part-time to California where they lived not far from Charlie’s longtime friend. Will Rogers.

“We were getting older and those Montana winters were getting to us,” she told the crowd.

In 1926, she said, Charlie got sick.

“He died on Oct. 25,” she said.

Life was difficult without Charlie, she said. She continued to manage his business, but in 1940, she died.

"Mrs. Russell deserves the credit for putting Charlie in the limelight," Sid Willis, close friend of the noted artist and his wife, said in her obituary. "Up to the time of his marriage, Charlie had no idea of the worth of his paintings.”