Russell Chatham, a West Marin landscape painter, printer, writer, and sportsman who became entwined with the Hollywood glamour of Bozeman and Livingston, Montana, in the 1980s, died Sunday, November 10, at the age of 80. He passed away at a memory care facility on the Peninsula, where he had been battling dementia and age-related illnesses, his daughter Lea Chatham confirmed. An artist whose work…

Russell Chatham, a West Marin landscape painter, printer, writer, and sportsman who became entwined with the Hollywood glamour of Bozeman and Livingston, Montana, in the 1980s, died Sunday, November 10, at the age of 80. He passed away at a memory care facility on the Peninsula, where he had been battling dementia and age-related illnesses, his daughter Lea Chatham confirmed. An artist whose work was often rendered in subtle earth tones, capturing fading light and shifting weather, Chatham was a favorite among celebrity collectors including Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Harrison Ford, Tom Brokaw, and Jessica Lange. His artwork appeared on the covers of his own collections of outdoor writing—Dark Waters and Silent Seasons—as well as on the books of Jim Harrison, Rick Bass, and Guy de la Valdène. “Russ never thought of painting as a career. It was just something he did,” said novelist Tom McGuane. Chatham met McGuane while living in Bolinas in 1967, and the two began fishing the coastal rivers together. When McGuane moved to southwest Montana, Chatham went to visit and never left, turning the high desert foothills into his life’s work. “He saw things askew from most people,” McGuane said from his home in McLeod, Montana. “If Russell looked at a landscape in California or Montana and decided to paint it, he wouldn’t look at what most people look at. His outlook was fresh and surprising.”