The small head of a Navajo man was originally done as one of a number of small painted plasters that Russell gave away to family and friends. In the early years of the twentieth century Russell learned the technique of casting multiple copies of a small work in plaster, using gelatine molds that he fashioned himself. Several of the versions of the Navajo man in painted plaster survive in public and private collections. After Nancy Russell’s death in May 1940, an inventory of her estate revealed four copies of the Navajo in unpainted plaster. C. R. Smith, a friend of Amon Carter’s who purchased the estate collection in 1941, erroneously assumed that the small sculpture had once been cast in bronze, and he ordered this copy to be cast from one of the plasters in the estate. In fact, there is no evidence that any copies of the Navajo were ever cast in bronze in Charles or Nancy Russell’s lifetimes, so the example on display here must properly be labeled an unauthorized cast of an original Russell plaster.