Russell’s dark, penetrating eyes were one of his most distinguishing features.

This is a sampling of Russell Cheney’s work. The listings contain the title (sometimes he retitled paintings for exhibitions); the dimensions, shown in inches as height by width, are listed when known; date of painting. Customarily, Russell Cheney painted in oil on board or canvas.

Cheney presented his double portrait Two Painters or At Cassis to the Portland [ME] Museum of Art in 1939, and F.O. Matthiessen (“Matty”) gave two of Cheney’s paintings to the Portsmouth [NH] Public Library. After Matty’s death, works reverted to the Cheney family, which presented other works to 15 museums, colleges or libraries; less than half still remain in those collections. The largest remaining institutional collections of his work today are at the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Manchester Historical Society, and the Mary Cheney Library both in Manchester, CT. There are a half dozen large private collections of Russell Cheney’s work, but dozens of them still remain in the hands of Cheney family members, heirs of friends and Yale clubmen.

The examples shown in these galleries vary in digital quality, as many are taken from images sent by email to us for our still-growing catalog raisonné. Of the almost 1,150 known works, almost 600 have been photographed in color plus a dozen more located (and images promised); another 276 are known only from black and white photographs of the artist, professional photographers Cheney employed, or magazine and newspaper images, and scrapbooks the artist kept of his own work. The remaining 250 titles without images are known primarily from exhibition catalogs, reviews, or letters.

We look forward to your help in increasing the numbers of known and photographed paintings.