The Amon G. Carter Collection includes a selection of Russell’s illustrated letters. Sent to close friends, the letters offered an ideal format for Russell’s verbal and visual talents. He was a gifted storyteller, and he had the ability to summarize key moments of a tale with a well-chosen illustration. Russell planned some of his letters as carefully as he would plan one of his paintings, creating drafts and preliminary sketches. His characteristic vernacular, replete with inventive misspellings and grammatical contortions, reflects the effort he put into crafting the uncultured, rough-and-tumble, and resolutely American cowboy persona that made him famous.

Russell created this letter for Sid Willis, the owner of the Mint Saloon in Great Falls, during a trip to London in 1914. The artist recounts a visit to Buckingham Palace, “where King Gorg [George] camps,” and the guards he encountered there who stood so still they looked like “taxidurnist work.”

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)