In Montana, Museum Keeps Its Word to Artist : Art: Russell Chatham never trusted curators or gallery owners. But he got a pleasant surprise at the Museum of the Rockies: A show of his work that spans 30 years.

Without even a handshake between them, a painter and a museum director batted around the idea and came to an agreement: Together they would stage the biggest one-man show by a living artist in the history of Montana. The deal was struck, the deed was done.

Then the museum director quit and moved away.

But this is the American West, where a man’s word is still supposed to count. So the painter painted and the idea stayed alive.

This summer, in the multimillion-dollar new wing of the Museum of the Rockies on the grounds of Montana State University, 30 years worth of Russell Chatham’s paintings, including 12 major new works and a companion exhibit, fill more than 9,000 square feet. The huge show opened June 9 and runs through Oct. 7.

On every wall in two of the museum’s three galleries Chatham’s works are on display. In the third display area there are pictures, sculpture, and pottery by Chatham’s relatives and friends, which have inspired the 51-year-old painter since he first took up a brush at age 8.

Chatham, a landscape artist who grew up around San Francisco, found his artistic vision in the Paradise Valley and environs of Montana. Headquartered in a frontier-vintage building in Livingston, he has become well-known and moderately well-fixed. Collectors wait two or three years for a new acquisition that could cost up to six figures.

A modest fellow of down-home bent, Chatham can, however, become cantankerous when discussing modern art trends. He hates most of them, and holds nearly all museum curators and art gallery owners in contempt.

Therefore, when Mick Hager, the museum’s former director who now heads the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville, first broached the idea of a major museum show, Chatham was leery.

“The way the so-called professional art world has operated is a sham,” Chatham was fond of telling friends and collectors. “Dealers are mostly shysters, hyping bad art to people in museums which are filled with absolute trash.”

That attitude had turned Chatham inward, just as it had turned off overtures from prominent dealers and art curators.

Dismissing notions that his art would be in the mainstream, or bring him any money, Chatham for years swore off self-promotion and marketing of his work and became absorbed in creating it. He held scores of one-man shows in small spaces, but refused to participate in what he called “everything but the kitchen sink” art shows.

Then, about the time Hager gave him his first one-man museum show in 1983, Chatham got discovered and got solvent, all at the same time.

Today, only the artist seems surprised by the recognition.

“I think Russell is tremendous as an artist,” Hager said. “From the beginning, I knew we had to have a major Chatham in the new facility, and I designed a space for it. When Russell first saw it he got excited and frightened at the same time, and said, ‘My God, you can see that wall for 70 feet!’

“But from the beginning we were clicking, and from the idea of having one painting the project evolved into a major retrospective, with the museum purchasing the one huge centerpiece painting and Russell donating the other 11 in the series.”

Although the two men agreed on $100,000 for the canvas the museum would purchase, there was no money to pay for it during the entire year Chatham worked on the project.

Then, just two weeks before the show opened, the owner of Brand S, a Livingston lumber company, donated $50,000 toward the painting. Steven Jackson, curator of art and photography who took over arranging the show after Hager departed, said the museum will apply for a matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

“I’m not concerned about the money,” said Chatham, who never has been.

He still keeps his home in the $75-a-month ranch house he rented when he arrived in the Paradise Valley in 1972. He got there in a ’49 Chevy pickup with five $1 bills in his pocket, and in fact still has the pickup, though its engine is terminally ill.

Entering the museum, the visitor sees that huge 10-by-12-foot painting Hager dreamed of, the same one that gave Chatham nightmares from inception to installation.

Entitled “The Headwaters of the Missouri River in April,” it is the heart of the dozen new canvases that will remain in the museum’s permanent collection. Those paintings comprise “The Seasons” suite--one representing each month in the region formed by the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson Rivers that create the Missouri River.

Chatham’s retrospective is 100 paintings executed from 1959 through 1989. They range from tiny, early oils of Northern California and fledgling visions of the Yellowstone Country that he bartered away for baby-sitting services, afghans and firewood when he was broke, to large pieces commanding thousands of dollars from the rich and-or famous, such as actors Peter Fonda, Margot Kidder, Harry Dean Stanton, and Jack Nicholson.

The third gallery, on the mezzanine above the museum entrance, features 30 paintings by Chatham’s grandfather, Gottardo Piazzoni, who executed the 14 murals in the San Francisco Library and has been his grandson’s inspiration. There will also be paintings by his great-uncle, Maurice del Mue, and other relatives and friends.

“This show is a big risk for us because it takes up all the changing exhibition space,” said curator Jackson. “Russell has a large, loyal following but it is not made up of historians, curators, or gallery owners because he has intentionally chosen to shun that world.”

Critic Don Berry, writing in Southwest Art Magazine, said of Chatham:

“His painting concedes nothing whatever to the intellectual fads that have dominated the fine arts in the past 40 years--his style remains solidly consistent, with a palette that has been compared to a diverse group of artists, including Gauguin, Cezanne, and Monet.”

In U.S. Art Magazine, critic Chris Waddington wrote: “ . . . his images seem to come from somewhere inside him . . . commanding technique brings him success on all levels.”

Donna Forbes, director of the Yellowstone Art Center, wrote that Chatham’s work “evokes the soft, exquisite manipulation of hues and values that time works upon one special place.”