Russell Cowles (1887–1979) was an American artist who painted landscapes, still lifes, and human forms in a style that combined both modernist and traditional elements.

In 1947 The New York Times critic Howard Devree said "his work shows a remarkably dynamic understanding of both traditional occidental and oriental painting as well as of the abstract principles which activate and underlie the modern movement as such".

[4] In 1946, a critic of the New York Sun wrote of Cowles's mature style that, "by artful simplification and placement of form, he unfailingly achieves designs of perfect balance.

[5] In 1952, a critic for the Los Angeles Times called him "a sensitive, well balanced, highly cultivated artist who loves his medium and demands of himself a craftsmanship to match his knowledge and sensibility".

[2][7] After graduating from West High School in Des Moines, he enrolled and spent two years at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa.

[9] By this time his rags-to-riches father had succeeded in banking and turned a failing newspaper, the Des Moines Register, into a widely-read and financially successful business.

He said its emphasis on an accurate depiction of the world with archaeological exactness was a "misfortune", implying that he achieved his own approach to art, which he said was neither academic nor conventional, only after he had overcome the influence of this "whole system of education".

[9] After graduating from Dartmouth Cowles traveled in Europe for three months, took a job in the advertising department of one of his father's newspapers, and studied at the Cumming School of Art in Des Moines.

[9][13][note 1] He subsequently moved to Manhattan where, in 1911, he took classes first at the National Academy of Design and then at the Art Students League[11] At this time, he also studied independently under Douglas Volk, Kenyon Cox, and Barry Faulkner, all well-known muralists with traditional artistic values.

I think all great art must come from that inner single-mindedness and to achieve this, the artist must shut from his vision all mere outward currents and eddies, and fads and fashions.

[8] In 1923, continuing his preference for large-scale, neo-classical, allegorical works, he made a mural in two panels for the lobby of one of his father's newspapers, the Des Moines Register.

By the time he returned to the United States in December 1928, he had made careful study of foreign art styles and cultures and produced a large portfolio of paintings and drawings.

[28][29] In 1935, the Feragil Galleries in New York gave Cowles his first solo exhibition and he participated in a group show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Devree said Cowles used "consistent development" and "courageous experiment" to, eventually, achieve "front rank" among American artists.

[54] During the 1950s and 1960s, despite the art world's enthusiasm for abstract expressionism and the New York School, Cowles continued to show in commercial galleries and to draw favorable critical reviews.

[6] In March 1954, the Evening Star of Washington D.C. reproduced one of his paintings in a review of an exhibition at the Art Center in Des Moines and, regarding a Kraushaar show a month before, he was said to possess "an almost mystical feeling for the essential character of his themes".

[2] With each succeeding show over a period of more than a decade, Russell Cowles has secured a surer position in the front rank of American artists.

Cowles achieved his mature style by abandoning his neo-classical mural training and adopting what he called a more "modern school of painting".

Bear, discussed the problem Cowles faced in attempting to "maintain an equilibrium or play between the two dimensional plane of the canvas and three-dimensional space".

This, he wrote, "is a complicated affair of balances, weights, patterns, textures, pigments and color—the sum total of which is almost a metaphysical realization of equilibrium".

In 1947, Cowles showed a painting called "Still Life With Melon" in a solo exhibition at the Dalzell Hatfield Galleries in Los Angeles.

Cowles said, "The dark shapes of the fruit against the very white tablecloth give the objects a sufficient feeling of mass and weight without much of any modeling in light and shade.

The folds of the tablecloth reduce themselves practically to lines and are utilized for compositional reasons—straight horizontals playing against the large curves of table top, melon, and platter.

He wrote, "Cowles began in youth with a thorough study of the old masters and their methods, evolving slowly into a sound abstractly based modernism...

Lights and darks, cools and warms, tonalities, the diverse ways of achieving recession in space and the whole spatial problem are inherent in his work, which includes some of the subtlest and most beautiful painting being done by contemporary Americans."

He concluded, "This is some of the most disciplined work being done today and it bears the promise of enduring, for it derives both from tradition and the basic abstract elementals of the modern movement.

[61] While traveling around the world between October 1926 and December 1928, he made many paintings and sketches but also wrote many letters for publication on local cultures and politics in places he visited.

There, Cowles made acquaintance with other modern artists and gave his support to the newly formed Santa Fe Art School.