Born in Canon City, Colorado, Charlie Dye became a painter of western genre inspired by the painting of Charles Russell.

From childhood, he was a sketcher, but it wasn't until a horse fell on him that he considered art as a career. In the hospital recovering from his injuries, he saw reproductions of Russell's paintings in a magazine, and that exposure set his career of portraying the lives of cattlemen.

Charlie Dye worked as a cowboy in Colorado, Arizona, and California until he was 21 and then enrolled in Chicago at the Art Institute and the American Academy. In 1936, he moved to New York City to work as a magazine illustrator and took lessons from Harvey Dunn, known as a great illustrator. He als...