A singular career …

… Romance Maker: The Watercolors of Charles M. Russell | At Home on the Range | By Barrymore Laurence Scherer - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Although Russell's work doesn't exhibit Homer's bright Impressionist palette or his sometimes innovative sense of compositional space, he often uses looser brushwork for backgrounds and foregrounds of his compositions, while painting his figures tightly—a manner allied to the French juste milieu style that influenced Paris-trained contemporaries like Sargent and Daniel Ridgway Knight. Russell "constantly experimented with technical ideas in order to record accurately the minute details of cowboy and especially Indian culture and dress," says the exhibition's curator, Rick Stewart, author of the splendid catalog.