Chatham was born in San Francisco and lived in the city until 1949 when his family moved to San Anselmo, where he spent the next twelve years. For the following eleven years, he worked and lived in Marshall, San Rafael, San Anselmo, Black Point, Bolinas, and Nicasio, earning his living as a sign painter and cabinetmaker. During that time, he met and married Doris Clark and had a daughter Gina in 1963. They divorced in 1969, and he remarried to Mary Fanning and had another daughter, Lea, in 1972. Along with his new wife and daughter, he moved to Livingston, MT in the spring of that year.
They joined a group of close friends who all began moving to Livingston the late 1960s and early 70s, including Tom McGuane, Becky Fonda, Gatz and Marian Hjortsberg, and Richard Brautigan. In those early years in Montana, Chatham, McGuane, Hjortsberg, Brautigan and others supported one another as they launched their careers and became icons.
As a painter and author, Chatham was self-taught. He began exhibiting formally in 1958, and he had four hundred one man shows at museums, art centers, private galleries, schools, colleges and universities not only throughout the west in places like Sun Valley, Aspen, Santa Fe and Denver, but also in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. His work has also been exhibited in Europe and Asia. Chatham began printmaking in 1981 and is regarded as one of the world's foremost lithographers.
In the 1980s, he married Suzanne Porter, and they had two children, Rebecca in 1986 and Paul in 1989. He opened his own gallery in Livingston and continued print making and painting. He collaborated with the Museum of the Rockies during the design of their new building and offered to donate a set of 12 large paintings for the permanent collection. The new paintings were showcased in a retrospective of 100 paintings spanning 30 years, the largest one-man show to ever be done in Montana for a living artist. Eventually he partnered with master printer Geoff Harvey to open a print shop and create original lithographs closer to home as well.
Publications about Chatham include a catalogue called One Hundred Paintings, and another about his original lithographs called The Missouri Headwaters. Chatham was been profiled in Esquire, Southwest Art, People, U.S. Art, Antiques and Fine Art, Architectural Digest, Smart, The Denver Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times, The Associated Press, National Public Radio's Morning Edition, and Fresh Air, PBS, and CBS Sunday Morning.
Chatham's writing includes hundreds of articles, short stories, essays and reviews about fly fishing, bird hunting, and conservation, as well as a number of pieces on food and wine. Since 1967, his work has appeared in Esquire, Sports Illustrated, The Atlantic, Men's Journal, Outside, Sports Afield, Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Gray's Sporting Journal, Fly Fisherman, Fly Rod and Reel, as well as in dozens of newspapers and smaller specialty magazines. His books include The Angler's Coast, Silent Seasons, and Dark Waters. He was the founder and publisher of Clark City Press, which published 32 books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, art, photography, and children's classics, all of which gave the Livingston based company a sound national reputation.
In 1995, Chatham conceived and designed a restaurant. Chatham's Livingston Bar & Grille opened in 1996, and for ten years it enjoyed a reputation as one of the Rocky Mountain region's premier dining establishments.
Among Chatham's private collectors are authors Peter Matthiessen, David Halberstam, Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, William Hjortsberg, James Crumley, Richard Ford, Rick Bass, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, Carl Hiaasen, and the late Richard Brautigan; editors and publishers Jann Wenner, the late Seymour Lawrence, Terry McDonell, and William Randolph Hearst, III; New York restaurateur Elaine Kaufman; cartoonists William Hamilton, Guindon, and the late B. Kliban; former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent; art critic Robert Hughes; media correspondents Tom Brokaw, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer, Van Gordon Sauter, and the late Charles Kuralt; entrepreneurs Yvon Chouinard, Paul Allen, and Tom Seibel; entertainment personalities Michael Keaton, Rip Torn, Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard, the late Sam Peckinpah, Jeff Bridges, the late Peter Fonda, Jane Fonda, Sydney Pollack, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sean Connery, Harry Dean Stanton, Angelica Huston, Jimmy Buffet, Dave Grusin, Don Henley, Glenn Frye, Dennis and Randy Quaid, Meg Ryan, the late Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, Ali MacGraw, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, and Harrison Ford.
Chatham struggled during the recession and decided to leave Montana and restart his career back in California in 2011. He settled in West Marin and set up a small studio. He painted until he was no longer able to do so.
Russell was preceded in death by his daughter Gina, his sister Bea, and his brother Art. He is survived by his sister Betty (Bob) Carpenter; his children Lea (Dan) McCann, Rebecca (Kevin) Chatham-Vazquez, and Paul Chatham; his granddaughter Della McCann; and many loving cousins, nieces, and nephews. His energy, storytelling, big laugh, mischievous brain, and duck dinners will be greatly missed.
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