In his later years, Russell grew increasingly nostalgic for the open-range life he had enjoyed as a youth. The Horse Wrangler, a self-portrait in bronze, is a testimony to those years, showing a younger Russell astride his sorrel horse Redbird. Simple and direct, the sculpture seems to be a statement of how the artist wished to be remembered. “I was neither a good roper nor rider,” he maintained in the later years of his life. “I was a night wrangler. How good I was, I’ll leave it for the people I worked for to say—there are still a few of them living. In the spring I wrangled horses, in the fall I herded beef. I worked for the big outfits and always held my job.” George Calvert, one of Russell’s closest friends, maintained that he was present when Russell modeled The Horse Wrangler in California in 1924 and that the artist later gave him the first bronze that was cast as a gift. According to Russell’s protégé, Joe De Yong, Russell struggled to achieve a likeness in the model and was not sure he had succeeded. “At one time he was disgusted with it and thought he would just make it ’The Cowpuncher,’” De Yong recalled. The brand on the horse’s right flank has been identified as having been registered to R. W. Clifford of Ubet, in Fergus County, Montana on May 16, 1887, and was probably one of many brands the artist had known while working as a young wrangler in the Judith Basin roundups. An image of the bronze was first shown in California Graphic magazine in May 1924. and the bronze was first exhibited the following January at the Arthur Harlow Galleries in New York City, where it was listed for $400. Following Russell’s death in October 1926, plans were put forth to enlarge the sculpture to monumental size and make it a memorial to the artist in Great Falls, Montana. Although such an idea appears to have been discussed with the artist himself, the proposal was never carried out.