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Painting may be worth a fortune Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Don Wolfington of Phoenix believes he owns an original oil painting by cowboy artist Charles Russell and has started the process of getting the painting, "Waiting for a Chinook," authenticated. A photocopy of a watercolor version of the image hangs above Wolfington's oil painting. Phoenix man's family heirloom might turn out to be an original Charles Russell By JOHN DARLING PHOENIX - Family legend has it that Donald Wolfington's grandfather won an original Charles Russell oil painting in a poker game 95 years ago and that it's worth a lot of money. Wolfington, a Medford blackberry bush trimmer, inherited the 12-by-18-inch painting, "Waiting for a Chinook," and has been trying for the last decade to find out if it's real. The painting has not received a stamp of approval from the main Russell experts, but was authenticated April 19 by artist-authenticator Graham Wilmott of Lake Creek, who also cleaned the painting. The image is well known in its first postcard-sized version and a later watercolor. It was shown in National Geographic magazine's January 1986 issue on the famed Western painter, who lived from 1864 to 1926. It depicts a bony cow, the last of a big herd, starving in winter snows, surrounded by five hungry wolves and waiting in vain for a warm Chinook wind. "There's no doubt in my mind it's real and that the signature (with trademark Russell bull skull) is absolutely without doubt his signature," Wilmott said. For the painting to be formally accepted in the art world, however, it would have to "get the blessings" of the foremost Russell experts, including curators at the Fred Jones Museum at University of Oklahoma and the Charles M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Mont., said Portland Art Museum assistant curator Margaret Bullock. The Portland Art Museum is staging the exhibit, "Remington, Russell and the Language of Western Art," through June 24. Wolfington's quest to authenticate the painting has been helped in recent months by Clifford James, of Talent, an aviation engineer who has used the Internet to gather information from historical societies and art museums. "We think, based on insurance estimates of the postcard and the watercolor, that it's worth around $100 million," James said. However, Bullock said, the $100 million figure is "way over," as most Russell paintings have sold in the range of $500,000 to $2 million. "It's possible it's real, and it's exciting he's started the process of finding out. But Russell painted 3,000 or 4,000 pictures and there are thousands of reproductions out there. It's an uphill battle (to authenticate it) and it has to go through a lot more steps to know for sure." The painting has several vignettes or "paintings within the painting," a lifelong trademark of Russell's, said Wilmott. James turned the painting upside down or sideways and pointed out faces in clouds and, within the bony cow's hulk, a squaw with papoose and several Indian heads and bodies. This, as well as cracking on the painting's surface and the age of the artboard, help document the painting as at least 100 years old, Wilmott said, and no one would have bothered to fake a painting of the then little-known Russell that long ago. The faint date of 1887 is visible beneath the cow. "Waiting for a Chinook" was among Russell's first paintings and was done when he was a cowboy during Montana's brutal winter of 1886-87, according to Web sites maintained by Russell scholars. When his employer asked how his herd was doing, Russell sent back the postcard painting, inscribed, "the last of 1,000." The painting was hung in a Helena, Mont. bar and launched Russell's artistic career. Wolfington believes the painting he has is a study for the watercolor, although no one knows for sure that such a study exists. The painting will be on display at Talent Historical Society in Talent City Hall May 26-27. If the painting turns out to be genuine, Wolfington said he would like to display it at museums and, if he sells it, use the money to help market a new brush-cutting blade, for which he recently received a patent. "Wealth would not make me different from the average Joe," Wolfington said. "Money can be very handy, but I can't see myself not working just because I have money." John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.