The Range Father, modeled just six months before Russell’s death, was his only bronze subject on the wild horse. The artist was a devoted admirer of the animal and its place in the West’s history, and few things made him angrier than the periodic campaigns to wipe out or sharply reduce the numerous wild horse herds that roamed the western backcountry. At that time many people in the cattle business considered the wild horse a dangerous nuisance that drove livestock from watering holes and ran off domesticated horses. Every few years, various western states initiated campaigns to exterminate thousands of these “broomtails,” which many stockmen considered fit only for the slaughterhouses and hide factories. Such moves stirred up intense debate on both sides, and Russell was one who was fervently opposed to the efforts of those he called “the horse-haters” to drive the wild horse into extinction. Like several of Russell’s other animal subjects, The Range Father touches on the daily life of a wild creature—which the artist considered no different from humans when it came to protecting a family and equally deserving of a rightful place on earth. The first Roman Bronze Works cast of the sculpture seems to have been produced and sent to the Russells in Montana in July 1926, when Nancy Russell observed that it “certainly shows a lot of action.” Unfortunately, shortly afterward the plaster master model for the sculpture was apparently damaged at the foundry, and several defective casts were made before Mrs. Russell secured the model and had it fully restored by Russell’s protégé, Joe De Yong. The subsequent casts, including the bronze pictured here, were done under Mrs. Russell’s supervision by Guido Nelli at the California Art Bronze Foundry in Los Angeles.