Shortly after Charles and Nancy Russell were married in 1896, Mrs. Russell began encouraging her husband to create subjects that would appeal to a broader audience and give them greater income. For her part, Mrs. Russell took on the responsibility of finding outlets for her husband’s work. By that time Russell had developed very well as a watercolorist, and the first works of his that were sold in the more fashionable galleries in New York were his watercolors. One important early outlet was calendars and reproductions, and Russell’s work was soon being marketed by a Great Falls printing firm, the W.T. Ridgeley Company. A hunting scene like the luminous autumnal scene shown in this watercolor would have been quite suitable for a calendar. Many of the firearms companies, as the Russells were to discover, preferred wildlife or hunting scenes such as this, and their calendars were distributed widely. While looking at this fluid, translucent watercolor, It is worthwhile to keep in mind that Russell was completely self-taught in the medium. It is apparent here that he had mastered the difficult technique of overlaying transparent washes without muddying the colors to achieve a real sense of substance, shadow, and depth.