Charles M. Russell defies the usual cowboy art cliches: This real cowboy wields a sharp eye

Engulfing compositions of pioneers, cavalry and indigenous tribes engaging in the American story of Manifest Destiny are what make Charles M. Russell's paintings among the most striking works on display this season at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. "Cowboy art" typically conjures notions of kitsch mid-century entertainment or villainizing depictions of the plight of the American Indian.

But the pieces in "The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell: A Retrospective," opening Sunday at the MFAH, are not this variety of cowboy art. Rather, these 60 paintings and precious bronze works, dating from the first two and a half decades of the 20th century, indicate the nuanced eye of a self-taught American painter who was as much a cowboy as a chronicler of a fading fantasy of the wide-open West.

Russell may be cornered into the label of "cowboy artist." However, he is not the machismo-obsessed frontiersman of Hollywood westerns, but the cowboy as iconoclast — a rogue cultural observer who began his career escaping at age 16 from his upper echelon St. Louis family to work at a sheep ranch in what was then the Montana Territory. He entered the cow-handling arena during the trade's twilight, and as his painting progressed, his attachment to the former West appeared more clearly on his canvas.

Russell's familiarity with frontier culture shines on such animated works as Camp Cook's Troubles, in which he wove one of the show's most dynamic arrangements of animals, crooks and the eternal landscape: A smoldering fire ignites the cries of a horse as it tosses off its rider's hat into the sky. To the right and left, a pioneer flashes a knife and a bandit is knocked to the ground. The prominent elements in the foreground — an abandoned yellow smock and upturned ax — add intrigue to the painting's story, while unconsciously directing the viewer's eye around the circular composition.

The tumult takes place no more than two yards from the observer, yet the backdrop of pink and lavender-soaked mountains at sunset remains miles in the distance.

It's an enrapturing glimpse of the adventure that embodied the American West just before Russell's time and still constitutes the region's popular iconography. While this is the sort of rough and tumble tableau that most associate with cowboy art, it's just the beginning of Russell's range of expression.

"Russell is not just a painter — he's a storyteller," explains Emily Ballew Neff, MFAH curator of American Painting and Sculpture.

For Neff, one of Russell's most stirring tales takes form in Meat's Not Meat Till It's in the Pan. The hunter's red plaid jacket indicate an Easterner, clearly out of his element, reconciling with his hunt. He hovers, perplexed, above his prey at the edge of a cliff — devastatingly out of reach. The soaring geography of the region is made all the more poignant by a bird freely navigating the abyss below. The towering halls of the Beck Building's exhibition space couldn't be a more fitting venue for communicating this vision of the Western landscape's unyielding power.

Raw emotions like those expressed in this painting — powerlessness, isolation — have been depicted for centuries by artists, but with Russell's paintbrush, they become entirely American.

"The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell: A Retrospective" is on view at MFAH June 6 to August 29.