This bronze does not seem to have been among the subjects cast in either Charles or Nancy Russell’s lifetime. An inventory of Mrs. Russell’s estate, taken after her death in May 1940, listed individual figures in plaster of the cowboy and the Chinese man, but no bronzes with the two figures combined seem to have been made prior to that date. C. R. Smith, the individual who initially purchased the contents of the Russell estate, was desirous of obtaining casts of each of Russell’s bronzes that were not already in the estate holdings, and he may have mistakenly thought that the bronze that came to be known as Painting the Town was among Russell’s original bronze subjects. Whatever the case, Smith commissioned Guido Nelli of the Nelli Art Bronze Works in Los Angeles to take the plaster figures and make a bronze copy for him. The title of the bronze, Painting the Town, seems to have been coined a few years after Smith had the first bronze copy cast, when subsequent casts were made by the person who acquired part of the Russell estate from Smith.