Russell’s keen knowledge of the grizzly bear was based on a lifetime of observation. His depictions of the animal were not the overly romanticized preconceptions of many of his contemporaries. Instead, he made sensitive and accurate depictions of the bear’s life cycle, particularly the raising of cubs and the animal’s ever-present quest for food. Five of the artist’s seven bronzes of bears depict a mother bear and her cubs. Here, the bronze shows a mother bear resting on her haunches while she and her two frolicsome offspring regard a porcupine from a short distance. While the little animal may at first resemble one of the bears’ favorite foods, the marmot, mother bear knows best and the curious cubs may well be in for an unpleasant surprise. This wildlife subject, with its family overtones, was very much in the spirit of progressive nature writing of the day, and a bronze like this one had the potential of becoming very popular. The shape of the bronze is intended to resemble an ash tray or pipe stand, and indeed that is how some of these small bronzes were used. It is not known when the first casts of this subject were made, but the first example in bronze was exhibited in Chicago in February 1916. Later that same year the Benjamin Zoppo Artistic Bronze Foundry in New York made around twelve casts for Nancy Russell at a cost of $10 apiece. The finished bronzes were priced at $35, and a number of these were sold. Later the price was upped to $50, and the bronze proved popular with a number of the artist’s oldest friends. In 1929 Mrs. Russell secured the plaster model of the bronze and had additional examples cast at the California Art Bronze Foundry that were sold at a new price of $150. The inventory of Nancy Russell’s estate taken after her death listed a total of six bronze casts of this subject. The bronze pictured here is one of those.