When I Was A Kid, 1905. Charles M. Russell.
Watercolor, gouache, and paper, 13 3/4 x 10 3/4 inches. Charles M. Russell Museum, Donated by Frederic G. and Ginger K. Renner in memory of Graham D. Renner.
Russell painted When I Was a Kid in 1905, about midway in his career, but the subject matter is a nostalgic look back at the beginning of his life in Montana. Essentially a self-portrait, the work depicts the artist as a young man in buckskins, riding his pinto Monte. He is accompanied by the mountain man Jake Hoover, to whom Russell apprenticed for two years. From 1881 to 1882, Hoover took the feckless teenager under his wing and hired him to help with chores at Pig Eye Basin, where Hoover had a cabin near the upper Judith River. From Hoover, Russell learned the ways of animals, and in his spare time he modeled and drew the creatures and activities that he observed around him. The painting was special for Nancy Russell used it as the frontispiece illustration to Good Medicine, the first collection of Russell's illustrated letters, which she published at her Pasadena home, Trail's End, in 1929.
