Rounded up in glory

Figures Frontispiece: Photographer unknown, [Frank Reaugh], circa 1940–45, Research Center, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection.. Frank Reaugh-The Man and Artist, 1908, Research Center, Fran

Rounded up

Frank Reaugh, Texas Renaissance Man

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grauer, Michael R., 1961–

Rounded up in glory : Frank Reaugh, Texas Renaissance man / Michael R Grauer.

p cm.—

Denton, Texas : University of North Texas Press, [2016]

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-57441-633-6 (cloth : alk paper)

1 Reaugh, Frank, 1860–1945 2 Painters—Texas—Biography.

stood by me through 30 years of research and endless stories about

Mr Reaugh, and especially to my father, Richard Lee Grauer, who was rounded up in glory himself in 2013

All of you know who you are.

Mary and Bill Cheek

David Dike Fine Art LLC

Dr Kenneth Hamlett

Dr Martin English

Beverly and George Palmer

Rainone Galleries

Patricia and Jeff Sone

And a special thank-you to The Gayden Family Foundation for making the color insert possible

Figures

Frontispiece: Photographer unknown, [Frank Reaugh], circa 1940–45,

Research Center, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

Ernst Raba, Mr Frank Reaugh-The Man and Artist, 1908,

Research Center, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

Annie Dealey Jackson, [Frank Reaugh in His Studio], 1900,

Research Center, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Frank Reaugh

over the Russ, circa 1880, ink on paper, 71/8 x 95/16 in.,

Castle, 1880, pastel on paper, 93/8 x 131/8 in., Panhandle-

7 Frank Reaugh, Copy after Jean-Francois Millet’s Noon, circa

Beach, circa 1880, pencil on paper, 4 x 6½ in., Panhandle-

Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum Research Center,

Artists, The Art Institute of Chicago, February 28 – March 13,

1901, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum Research

18 Photograph of Frank Reaugh and sketching outfit, circa

1890, 4 x 5 in., Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum

Research Center, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

1911, 4 x 5 in., Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum

Research Center, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

L O Griffith, 12 November 1916, Panhandle-Plains

Historical Museum Research Center, Frank Reaugh

Museum, Gift of the Artist (Frank Reaugh and L O Griffith

1920, 4 x 5 in., Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum

Research Center, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

24 Harper’s Weekly, January 31, 1874, page 100, with wood

engraving after William de la Montagne Cary, “Cattle Raid

Colorplates

Museum, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

Historical Museum, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

3 Frank Reaugh, The Approaching Herd, 1902, oil on canvas

Historical Museum, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

Historical Museum, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

Museum, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

mounted on canvas, 20 x 40 in., Private Collection

Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, gift of Summerfield Roberts

in., Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

Estate Collection

Museum, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection

I have been thinking to-day,

As my thoughts began to stray,

Of your memory to me worth more than gold

As you ride across the plain,

’Mid the sunshine and the rain,

You will be rounded up in glory bye and bye

Chorus:

You will be rounded up in glory bye and bye,

You will be rounded up in glory bye and bye,

When the milling time is o’er

And you will stampede no more,

When he rounds you up within the Master’s fold

As you ride across the plain

With the cowboys that have fame,

And the storms and the lightning flash by

We shall meet to part no more

Upon the golden shore

When he rounds us up in glory bye and bye

May we lift our voices high

To that sweet bye and bye,

And be known by the brand of the Lord;

For his property we are,

And he will know us from afar

When he rounds us up in glory bye and bye

Written by C W Byron, 1900( c o w b o y ’ s c a R n I v a l )

On 30 May 2015 I stand on the bridge over Tule Creek below the dam that formed Lake Mackenzie out of Tule Canyon in Briscoe County, Texas, in 1976 I am looking at one of the landscape fea-tures that captivated Frank Reaugh for many years: the Cliffs of Tule And due to incredible rainfall this spring, I see for my first time Tule Creek with water flowing in it After over 27 years of living

in the Texas Panhandle, I have driven this road many times This is

a gift

On numerous occasions over the past couple of years, I have had the opportunity to drive Frank Reaugh’s “Western Texas” through Silverton to Dickens to Aspermont to Abilene and as far south as Christoval on the South Concho River I do not believe these opportunities are accidental I believe Mr Reaugh was calling

me to do so; consequently I enjoyed the distinctive honor of seeing, smelling, touching, and feeling—to truly experience—the land he

so dearly loved With that, only today can I truly lend credibility to this tome and here’s why:  

In his 2014 book, Kit Carson and the First Battle of Adobe Walls:

A Tale of Two Journeys, historian and archaeologist Alvin Lynn noted

his “disappointment that no author who had written about Carson’s

I share Mr Lynn’s disappointment that so few authors of the ous articles, monographs, and studies on Frank Reaugh ever walked

numer-in his footsteps, and even worse, seem to have avoided lettnumer-ing his paintings speak for themselves Until I read Mr Lynn’s book, I did not realize I had been “on the [Reaugh] trail” since 1985 when

I moved from Washington, D C to Dallas

Beginning in summer 1986 admittedly unknowingly at first—

I  began my Frank Reaugh odyssey with a trip to Wyoming and drove across the Crow Reservation in Montana (the prettiest, green-est grass I ever did see) This was followed in March 1987 when

I took a camping trip—a la a Reaugh sketching expedition—from

Dallas to Big Bend, Texas My route took me through Sweetwater, Balmorhea, Fort Stockton, Fort Davis, and to a camp in the snow in the Davis Mountains below Indian Lodge On to Big Bend National Park I trekked where the wall-to-wall RVs forced a night sleeping in the bed of my pickup and a detour to Terlingua the next day And,

I  looked over the Rio Grande out into Mexico Unwittingly, I was standing where Mr Reaugh had stood 64 years earlier

My Reaugh-led research journey began in earnest a year later when Southern Methodist University awarded me a Haakon Travel-ing Fellowship for summer 1988 to travel to France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany, to cut Mr Reaugh’s trail for sign Using some of his ink drawings he made in Paris and The Netherlands for souvenirs as my guide, I attempted to walk where he walked Many

of the records of the Academie Julian having been destroyed during

World War II, I was fortunate to find the original registration book with his name entered a hundred years before I read it for myself That was a great day

Since that original research for my thesis, my work on and ing of Mr Reaugh has never ceased I often attempted to arrange

track-my frequent travels across the Lone Star State, into the American Southwest, and even north to Colorado and Wyoming, to afford opportunities to trace his actions Consequently, I have visited places such as Eliasville, Flomot, Gasoline, Quitaque, Benjamin, Bronte, and Spur, Texas; Acoma and Laguna Pueblos, Taos, Las Vegas, Tucumcari, Las Cruces, Ruidoso, and the Organ Mountains, New Mexico; Flagstaff, San Francisco Peaks, Tucson, Phoenix, and Grand Canyon, Arizona; Colorado Springs, Pike’s Peak, Spanish Peaks, Trinidad, Conejos Canyon, and Pueblo, Colorado; Fort Sill, Lawton, Ardmore, and Claremore, Oklahoma; and Cody and Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming; and have been on historic ranches such as the T Anchors, JAs, the 6666s, the XITs, the ROs, the Matadors, the Pitchforks, and the Spurs Moreover, I have had the distinct honor of riding herd on over 1,000 Reaugh works of art (oils, pastels, pencil drawings, and photographs) and countless Reaugh artifacts for 28 years

Therefore, and again to borrow from and paraphrase my good friend Alvin Lynn, “I know the movements [of Mr. Reaugh] well; I’ve studied every scrap of information and read every book [and article] I could find about [Mr Reaugh].” There may be someone else who has examined Mr Reaugh more assiduously, but I am not sure who that is.

But the time has come to write it all down and turn this herd into the corral Before He rounds us up in glory bye and bye I am sure someone, somewhere, will catch an error or two However, whoever that someone is has miles to travel to catch up to me (and

Mr Reaugh)

friend-I could not have completed my thesis, much less the program, and certainly not this book, without art history department secretary Brenda Huber She fielded telephone calls, letters, and messages, and always kept me on track And she helped during the beginning

of the program in ways that she will probably never know Thanks, Brenda

I extend my thanks to the entire staff of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, but certain individuals deserve special recogni-tion Administrative assistants Diane Brake, Claudette Sharp, Frances Kohout, and Tammy Hefner, and former registrar Sidney Shaller and current registrar Mary Moore, were instrumental in getting the thesis and, ultimately, the book off the ground and landing it, respec-tively Claire Kuehn, Dorothy Johnson, Betty Bustos, Cesa Espinoza, Millie Vanover, and Warren Stricker of the PPHM’s Research Center bent over backwards in helping me find Reaugh material in the archives; moreover Warren scanned innumerable Reaugh images over many years and helped me find certain Reaugh documents PPHM’s curator emeritus of history, Dr William Elton Green, taught

me the weight of documentation and proper research, and so Bill is responsible for all the endnotes! Finally, I  thank former directors

D.  Ryan Smith and Walter R Davis III, and current director Guy

C Vanderpool, for their continued support and encouragement, and Ryan especially for granting me a leave of absence to travel

to Europe even though I hadn’t been at PPHM quite a year when

I went I extend a special thanks to Olive Vandruff Bugbee, former curator of art, who helped me catalogue every single Frank Reaugh pastel and oil at PPHM in 1987 and 1988, for her assistance with this project Olive also “sponsored” my trip to Europe telling me that she’d never get to go, so I was going for her

There are others associated with the Panhandle-Plains cal Society and/or West Texas A&M University for their unswerv-ing inspiration in completing this book These fine people include Natrelle and Russell Long; Bonney MacDonald; Annette and Garry Nall; Betty and Fred Rathjen; Janey and Don Ray; and Amy Winton;

Histori-I am indebted to them all

In searching out Reaugh paintings and archival materials

in Texas several individuals and staffs were extremely helpful Kathleen Gee of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, was most kind in allowing me to examine all 231 Reaugh paint-ings there, as well as providing some useful information Likewise, Peter Mears, the current curator of the Reaugh Collection at UT, broke new ground with their exhibition and catalogue for same,

Windows on the West: The Art of Frank Reaugh, to which I contributed

an essay The staff of the Eugene C Barker Texas History Center,

University of Texas, was eager to assist and did so enthusiastically While less well staffed than the HRC, the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University proved to be a boon because of its staff and their willingness to provide access to materials and to all 217 paint-ings there

Certain Reaugh students also deserve special thanks Lucretia Donnell Coke provided insight and encouragement at a low point

in the book’s progress and I thank her heartily Similarly, Josephine Oliver Travis granted me an interview and I thank her for that and her willingness to let me visit any time Other former Reaugh

students, Eleanor Adams English and June Mascho, also granted me interviews in person and via telephone, respectively.

In St Louis, Gerald Bolas, former director, Washington sity Gallery of Art, provided important material in spite of trying

Univer-to move at the same time Stephanie Sigala, Head Librarian, and Norma Sindelar, Archivist, Richardson Memorial Library, St Louis Art Museum, provided a watershed of material on the St Louis Museum and School of Fine Arts and Halsey C lves

In Paris, nearly everyone was eager to help; however, there were individuals who went out of their way to help a sometimes confused American Frédéric Siron, Cabinet de Dessins, Musée du Louvre, was my companion while looking at pastels and I thank him for his conversation and insight Christian Garoscio, Restaurateur d’Arts Graphiques au Musée d’Orsay, was instrumental in tracking down the Académie Julian archives Anne Roquebert, Documentation, and Anne-Paule Benzaquin, Bibliotheque, both Musee d’Orsay, and their staffs, were most generous with their help as was the staff of the Bibliotheque au Musée du Louvre, especially the photo-copy man who was most amusing Although extremely confusing some-times, I thank the staff of the Bibliotheque Nationale, especially the branch at Versailles, for their patience and their help Finally, Mlle Hildesheimer (I never knew her first name) was extremely helpful with the Académie Julian papers

Perhaps my friends deserve the most gratitude and I would like to thank several in particular Kathy Windrow and Jess Gallo-way always fielded my middle-of-the-night telephone calls and were always encouraging Finally, for his interest, support, and for being

my friend while at SMU and beyond, I warmly thank Claudio anchi (“Zamblanche”)

Zambi-Any project requires a champion, and mine were many; most were collectors of early Texas art Among those who I thank emphatically are Marcia and Marc Bateman; J P Bryan; Mary and Bill Cheek; A C Cook; Holly and Sanford Cox; Nancy and Joseph Foran; Cynthia and Bill Gayden; Geralyn and Mark Kever; Cliff Logan; Beverly and George Palmer; Linda and Bill Reaves; Patricia and Jeffrey Sone; and Randy Tibbits and Rick Bebermeyer

Mr Cheek gave generously not only from his own pocketbook, but also of a sometimes even more valuable resource, time and expertise, to help with this project Thank you Bill, for without you the recognition factor for Texas art would be nowhere today and there would not be a TACO or CASETA

Likewise, A C Cook (Yosemite Sam in the flesh), never tated to share his opinions with me; nor with anybody else for that matter! He helped me see the “national treasure” that Mr Reaugh and early Texas art was and is A C also reminded me that I am the caretaker of Mr Reaugh’s legacy for just a little while, and to be humble in that sacred duty In other words, he taught me that I am the pipe, not the source

hesi-Cynthia and Bill Gayden, through their foundation, funded the color plates in this monograph I am indebted to them for stepping

up at the eleventh hour (yet again) to rescue one of my projects Thank you, Cynthia and Bill

Museum, library, and archive directors, curators and registrars have come and gone and some have stuck throughout the life of the writing of this book Sam Ratcliffe, Head, and Ellen Buie Niewyk, Curator, Jerry Bywaters Special Collection, Hamon Arts Library, SMU, were extremely helpful in spite of the small Reaugh collec-tion there Joanne Cullum, then registrar at the Meadows Museum

at SMU, tasked me in the summer of 1986 with finding the versity Art Collection, scattered all over campus Among those works located were a couple Reaugh pastels Ms Cullum always encouraged and pushed me and taught me how to pronounce Reaugh I wish to thank Terry Keane, former director of the Abilene Museum of Fine Arts; J Evetts Haley, Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library and History Center; Eleanor Jones Harvey, senior curator

Uni-at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and former curUni-ator of American art at the Dallas Museum of Art; Rebecca Lawton of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art; Emily Neff, formerly of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; B Byron Price, director, Charles

M Russell Center and the University of Oklahoma Press, University

of Oklahoma; Cecilia Steinfeldt, curator emerita, Witte Museum; Howard Taylor, director, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts There

are others whom I have not forgotten, but simply mis-shelved in

my memory

Lastly, I thank my parents, Richard L and Nancy Grauer, for their combination of encouragement, support, chastisement, and push, without which I would never have finished And to my family: Paula Grauer, Matthew Finney, Hannah Grauer, and Sarah Grauer,

I extend my deepest gratitude and love for your patience with me during the writing of this book, over these many years

Finally, I thank Charles Franklin Reaugh for providing me the chance to tell his story as accurately as I could I only wish I had been privileged enough to sleep out under the West Texas stars on one of his sketching trips

In 1936, Texas celebraTed its centennial After intense petition among the major cities in Texas at that time, primarily San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas, the north Texas city won the right

com-to host the Texas Centennial Central Exposition Dallas had been hosting the State Fair of Texas since at least 1885, and presented the most elaborate and extensive array of new construction and oppor-tunities to present to the world what Texas was all about

Included in these ambitious plans was a new Dallas Museum of Fine Arts Among the exhibitions to be presented at the centennial celebration would be an historical survey of American art Borrow-ing from institutions and private collectors across the nation, this exhibition would be touted as one of the finest of its kind ever pre-sented in the United States up to that point Moreover, also part of the art exhibitions would be an opportunity to show the world what art-making in Texas looked like in 1936

Unfortunately, perhaps the most important figure in Texas art was conspicuously not invited to the party, neither in the survey

of American art nor in the Texas section Despite having moved

to Dallas in 1890; despite having brought the finest in American art to the State Fair of Texas for at least a decade so as to give the Fair art exhibition a strong foundation; despite having devoted his career to bringing art in all forms to Dallas, including exhibiting his own work, offering musical and theatrical performances, and

establishing the very first public art gallery in Dallas; and despite having taught thousands of children in Dallas through art to be bet-ter observers of the world around them, the artist left off that invita-tion list was none other than Frank Reaugh

Ironically, that same year Reaugh wrote a small pamphlet

enti-tled simply, Biographical, in which he described how his art took

a  different trail from his contemporaries Charles M Russell and Frederic Remington Reaugh felt that during the Texas trail driving years he “was the only artist, it seems, who thought of [trail drives and Texas longhorns] as being a subject to paint.” Calling longhorns

“Texas cattle,” Reaugh probably painted—and photographed—the only images of true Texas longhorns, before they were cross-bred

with European cattle Furthermore, Reaugh’s plein-air pastels of the

landscape of the Southwest, usually done along the Red, Wichita, Brazos, and Concho rivers and on into New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado, and even Wyoming, show his interest in preserving the landscape of the American Southwest before it was overgrazed or plowed under:

I like to be where the skies are unstained by dust and smoke, where the trees are untrimmed and where the wild flowers grow I like the brilliant sunlight, and the far distance I like the opalescent color of the plains It is the beauty of the great Southwest as God has made it that I love to paint.1

Inventor, teacher, artist, and arts promoter all describe the man

unpar-alleled in American art Appropriately, he is often called the “Dean

of Texas Artists.” Moreover, Reaugh may have had greater impact

on the future of Texas art than any artist or teacher prior to World War II, and possibly even today Frank Reaugh was a genius

Most publications on Reaugh up to this point have focused more

on his eccentricities (“ate corn meal mush for breakfast”; “slept on sawhorses”) or on the sketching trips with students as some kind

of bohemian precursor to the “Merry Pranksters” of 1960s infamy Moreover, some authors on Reaugh had their own axes to grind, attempting to have had him rub shoulders with Old  Texas or

Old  West characters Much of that which has been written about Reaugh has been so much folderol about the authors themselves; rarely has Reaugh been allowed to speak for himself Finally, there are those raconteurs about Reaugh who suffer mightily for him,

or have attempted to absorb some of his spotlight as their own Sadly, no publication on Reaugh that I am aware of has ever looked critically at his life and career Reaugh has become somewhat legendary, and in most cases, the legend was printed However, while the facts support much of the legend, the facts are a far greater story This monograph is an attempt to let Mr. Reaugh, and the truth about him, speak for themselves

Art in Texas, 1836–1890

Texas was noT a hoTbed for art-making nor for art tion between the founding of the Republic of Texas (1836) and the centennial of the United States (1876), the same year Frank Reaugh arrived in the Lone Star State Frances Battaile Fisk, one of the earli-est Texas-art historians, placed the beginning of Texas’s art history proper at 1888 “with the painting of the Presidents of the Republic

apprecia-of Texas and the Governors apprecia-of the State, and apprecia-of vast historical jects, and of the erection of monuments and statues Texans

sub-of earlier generations were too occupied with the development sub-of material resources, following the struggle for independence, to

Esse Forrester-O’Brien put things a bit more graphically for the

history of art-making in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas: “In

the days when the Indians ruled the land, the story goes that while

an unknown artisan was yet carving on the great door to LaSalle’s fort, Fort St Louis, on Lavaca Bay, Texas, the Indians smote him

In spite of pioneer preoccupations—including never-ending threats from American Indians, primarily Comanches and their Southern Plains allies—there was art activity in some areas of Texas, centering around Austin, Houston, and San Antonio Itinerant portrait painters, artist/explorers, survey artists, and, later in the century, academically trained artists who established permanent or

1

C h a p t e r

semi-permanent residence, comprised the artistic community of the Republic and State of Texas, until 1889.

However, none of these earlier artists had any real effect on Frank Reaugh when he arrived in Texas in 1876, nor until he moved

to Oak Cliff, near Dallas, in 1890 Nevertheless, Reaugh’s artistic milieu, his arena, was the cow country west of Fort Worth, from the Rio Grande to the North Canadian River Here some artists found purchase and an area fecund for artistic exploration, albeit chiefly for government-issued reports When Frank Reaugh first sketched

in “Western Texas” in 1883, he found trail already broken in the region

The Southern Plains of the United States was not the “Great American Desert” described by Major Stephen H Long in his

An Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1819, 1820.3 Instead it was (and is) a fertile

grassland capable of sustaining millions of Bison bison (American

Buffalo), despite periodic drought Waves of first PaleoIndians, followed by sedentary farmers such as the Antelope Creek Culture, who were, in turn, displaced by Apaches, whom Comanches drove west and southwest by 1750, inhabited this “desert.”

Through trade agreements with other native groups to the east and west, Spaniards out of New Mexico and Texas, and French trad-ers from Louisiana Territory, from about 1750 to 1850 Comanches controlled virtually everything south of the South Platte River to the northern states of Mexico, and from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains

in the west to the Mississippi Valley in the east Scholars today refer to

this vast region as Comancheria, using the terminology applied to the

area by Spanish officials to the frontier of New Spain After ing the horse in about 1700, Comanches became supreme stockmen, raising enormous herds of horses At one time Comanches could claim four horses per capita The Comanche horse-trading network extended into the Dakotas as far north as the Mandan and Hidatsa villages on the upper Missouri River While maintaining a horse-driven Great Plains culture, hunting buffalo and living in tipis, northern Plains tribes such as the Sioux and Blackfeet relied on Comanche horses The cold in the north often killed horses on the northern

obtain-Plains, so Comanches cornered the market To the east, the Kansa, Pawnee, and Osage also needed Comanche horses, and traded goods and foodstuffs unavailable to Comanches Texas Indians such as Wacos, Tawakonis, and Wichitas were also part of this network Like-wise pueblos in today’s New Mexico provided Comanches with corn, beans, and squash, through trade for horses, buffalo hides, tallow, and meat Eventually, Comanches became welcome at Taos Pueblo’s annual trade fair for example; even today, Taos Indians perform a form of the “Comanche Dance” during their annual rituals

Beginning in 1786, after the governor of the Province of Nuevo México, Juan Bautista de Anza, struck a treaty with Comanches,

Hispanic hunters began hunting buffalo on the Llano Estacado

with less fear of attack Comanches agreed to allow Spanish (then

Mexican) hunters (ciboleros) to hunt buffalo on Comancheria These

hunting parties usually came from north-central New Mexico, from

Taos to Belen and brought chiles, corn, beans, and squash, to trade

with Comanches After the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which saw the forcible removal of American Indians from the southeastern United States to Arkansas Territory, Comanches allowed displaced members of the “Five Civilized Tribes” to hunt buffalo on the

Comancheria Likewise, Pawnee, Osage, Kansa, and other Indians

struck hunting agreements with Comanches During the drought

of the 1840s and 1850s on the southern Great Plains, Comanche horse herds competed with bison for the remaining grass, and buf-falo died by the hundreds By the 1850s, Comanches were taking, and allowing to be taken, about 300,000 American buffalo per year,

Eventually, Comanches came to depend on goods and stuffs from other native and non-Comanche groups For example, Comanche trade for firearms, shot, and powder, resulted in them

food-having more of this materiel than the Spanish and Mexicans had on

their own frontiers This dependence on Euro-American and native material goods eventually contributed to the Comanche downfall

By 1875, Comancheria was no more.

Nevertheless, the fear of Comanche reprisals and uprisings lasted in West Texas even after Frank Reaugh began sketching the

region and almost into the twentieth century The “Great Panhandle

These waves of Native Americans left multiple examples of their cultures across the region Excavations at archaeological sites reveal the material culture of paleo and historic camps and settlements,

as well as vast trade routes to the southwest using Alibates flint—or access to it—as currency But the petroglyphs and pictograph sites that dot the region are the most concrete evidences of these cultures Through his many travels across the region, particularly into hard-to-reach places, Frank Reaugh had ample opportunity to encounter and contemplate the multi-layered sophistication of this non-European art-making tradition By the early 1830s, Euro-American artists began

making inroads into the Southern Plains, including the Llano Estacado

in today’s Texas, eastern New Mexico, and western Oklahoma

George Catlin (1796–1872) probably never painted in nized Texas proper, although he is usually included in histories of

recog-early art production in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas In

early 1834 Catlin traveled to Fort Gibson, then in Arkansas Territory (later Indian Territory) near present-day Tulsa, Oklahoma, so as to paint Indians in the area and on the southern plains to the west The artist had already created a significant body of work by traveling

up the Missouri River to the mouth of the Yellowstone River in 1832, painting portraits of American Indians and landscapes of the region along the way

Catlin arrived in Arkansas Territory on the heels of the enforcement of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 For two months

he painted Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, Osages, and members of other tribes near Fort Gibson, and in June set out with a company

of U.S Army dragoons hoping to encounter Kiowas, Comanches,

marched in a southwesterly direction, stopping near the ture of the Washita and Red Rivers, near present-day Ardmore, Oklahoma, and Catlin remarked that they could see Texas on the

encountering Comanches At a Comanche village at the base of the Wichita Mountains, near present-day Lawton, Oklahoma, Catlin

was forced to remain because of sickness (probably malaria), while the rest of the company traveled farther west, almost certainly into

today’s Texas Panhandle Nevertheless, his Comanche Village, Women

Dressing Robes and Drying Meat is likely one of the first paintings of

Comanches from life His written description is equally important

to scholars, and to this discussion on Frank Reaugh, as Reaugh would visit, sketch, and photograph the same environs some

60 years later: “The village of the Camanchees [sic] is

com-posed of six or eight hundred skin-covered lodges, made of poles and buffalo skins, in the manner precisely as those of the Sioux and other Missouri [River] tribes In the view I have made of

Catlin was forced to rely on sketches of “Kioways and Wicos” done by a comrade, Joseph Chadwick, for his later paintings from

Lances and Bows and Elk and Buffalo Making Acquaintance, Texas,

between 1846 and 1848 while in Paris as he toured his “Indian

From 1845 to 1869, the U.S government sent engineers trained

in watercolor painting as well as artists to Texas and Indian tory to investigate conditions, gather information, and create a visual record of the region These “recorders” included Lt James W Abert, Heinrich Balduin Mollhausen, Vincent Colyer, and Lt E H Ruffner While their work may have had limited exposure in their own time, still their contributions offer a more complete picture of early West Texas art in the mid-nineteenth century

Terri-On 12 August 1845, Lt James W Abert (1820–1897) took an dition of 32 men from Bent’s Fort in southern Colorado, south across Raton Pass, then east to the Canadian River He and his party fol-lowed the Canadian east and by early September entered the north-

expe-ern part of the Llano Estacado Trailed and scouted by Comanches the

entire way, Abert and his men also encountered Kiowas By tember Abert’s party had turned south to the “False Washita” River (now simply Washita), following it east-southeast into then-Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) The expedition surmounted the Cross Timbers in Indian Territory and arrived at Fort Gibson, I.T by late

crude, preserved some of the earliest images of the peoples

inhabit-ing the Llano Estacado in the mid-1840s.

The earliest known images of Palo Duro Canyon are from tary expeditions searching for the source of the Red River In March

mili-1852, Mexican War veteran and trailblazer Captain Randolph Marcy was assigned the command of a 70-man exploring expedition across the Great Plains in search of the source of the Red River and was directed to “collect and report everything that may be useful or interesting.” Marcy’s party crossed a thousand miles of previously undocumented Texas and present-day Oklahoma, discovering valu-able mineral deposits and new species of mammals and reptiles

He reportedly was the first white man to find the sources of both forks of the Red River and explore Palo Duro Canyon Marcy’s 1852 expedition has been called  the most significant of his career and

“the best organized, best conducted, and most successful” venture

into the region to that date His report on the expedition,

Explora-tion of the Red River of Louisiana, In the Year 1852 With Reports on the Natural History of the Country, published in 1853 and including

the first known images of Palo Duro Canyon, has become a classic

watercolors published in Marcy’s report are lost

Artist-scientist Heinrich Balduin Mollhausen (1825–1905), something of a protégé of Alexander von Humboldt, joined the 35th parallel Pacific railroad survey under Lt Amiel Whipple, in

1853 Starting from Fort Smith, Arkansas, the party set out in July 1853 along the Canadian River following the track of previ-

somewhat fantastical chromolithographs—taken from his colors—of the landscapes in the northern Texas Panhandle along the Canadian are probably the earliest views recorded by a Euro-American artist Mollhausen returned to Germany and published

water-a recollection of his Western trwater-avels, water-and becwater-ame known there water-as the “German Fenimore Cooper.”

In spring 1869, landscape painter Vincent Colyer (1825–1888)traveled across Indian Territory from Fort Gibson, on assignment from the newly created Board of Indian Commissioners (BIC) Congress

created the Board in April 1869 to aid in developing a more humane federal strategy toward American Indians and its efforts helped form President Ulysses S Grant’s “peace policy.” Colyer’s 1869 assignment from the Board was to ascertain conditions among Indians on the Southern Plains and in New Mexico Territory Later, he traveled to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska on a similar assignment.

Among American artists, Colyer was in a unique position to advise the BIC, as he had served on the U.S Christian Commission during the Civil War A Quaker born in Bloomingdale, New York, he became

a serious artist, being elected as associate of the National Academy of Design where had also studied He exhibited large paintings from his sketches of the West at the National Academy of Design (NAD) and the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876 After the Indian Wars, Colyer focused on the Connecticut landscape for the remain-der of his career However, his watercolor and pencil sketches of the American West have become treasured as early documents of rarely depicted parts of the United States during this time

Colyer, Big Canadian

Colyer stayed at Camp Supply on his way through Indian Territory and he sketched and interviewed the Arapaho leaders Yellow Bear and Little Raven, and Cheyennes who had witnessed the Battle of the Washita His excursion took him near enough to sketch the Ante-lope Hills and Medicine Bluff, both sacred to Southern Plains tribes

His On the Big Canadian River, May 1869, may be the earliest known

painting of the Texas Panhandle and his paintings of western Indian Territory are almost certainly the earliest images after George Catlin’s

In June 1874 Billy Dixon, Bat Masterson, and the other 28 buffalo hunters (and one woman) at Adobe Walls in today’s Hutchinson County Texas weren’t terribly concerned about the first Impres-sionist exhibition held in Paris in April of that year In fact the furor over the newest French art movement—and any art news for that matter—paled in comparison to their focus on the 300–600 Southern Plains Indians descending upon the trading post about 4:00 a.m on 27 June Art and culture were not on these buffalo hunters’ minds This fight precipitated the Red River War in the fall

of 1874 and early part of 1875 and opened the region to American settlement The first three towns to be founded in the Texas Panhandle between 1876 and 1880 were Mobeetie, Tascosa, and Clarendon Mobeetie was founded to cater to the needs of soldiers

at Fort Elliott, established in the aftermath of the Red River War Tascosa was a cowtown Clarendon was a Methodist community also called “Saints Roost” by cowboys of the region

In June 1876, Lieutenant Ernest H Ruffner (1845–1937), Kentucky native, West Point graduate, and chief engineer of the Department of the Missouri, led a topographical survey of the head-waters of the Red River in the Texas Panhandle The six-week survey began at Fort Elliott (near present-day Mobeetie, Texas) and fol-lowed Palo Duro Canyon to the junction of Tierra Blanca and Palo Duro creeks, then turned southeast to Tule Creek Ruffner and his

many army engineers, Ruffner was a proficient watercolorist He

completed his Red River, the oldest extant painting of Palo Duro

Carl Julius Adolph Hunnius, a civilian draftsman on the survey, kept a detailed diary of the expedition, including some drawings of

Three artists whose names have become synonymous with early Texas painting, Henry Arthur McArdle, William Henry Huddle, and Robert Jenkins Onderdonk, all arrived in Texas between 1865 and

1880 McArdle (1836–1907) and Huddle (1847–1892) had virtually

no impact on Reaugh, while Robert J Onderdonk certainly did Robert Jenkins Onderdonk (1852–1917) was the only earlier Texas artist with whom Frank Reaugh may have had direct con-tact Robert Onderdonk, father of the better known Robert Julian Onderdonk (1882–1922), was born in Catonsville, Maryland Like William Henry Huddle, Onderdonk enrolled at the National Acad-emy of Design during its financial difficulties and was part of the original class of the Art Students League Onderdonk studied under William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Walter Shirlaw (1838~1909), James Carroll Beckwith (1852–1917), and Alexander Helwig Wyant (1836–1892) Drawn to San Antonio in 1879 (three years after Reaugh had arrived in Texas) by the promise of portrait commis-sions, Onderdonk quickly became an artist, and person, of impor-tance in that city Although the portrait commissions were not as forthcoming as he would have liked, Onderdonk supplemented his income by teaching art He was an influential member of the San Antonio art community, and in 1886 was instrumental in founding the Van Dyke Art Club His reputation apparently spread through-out Texas, and in 1889, while Reaugh was in Europe, Onderdonk was invited to Dallas by art enthusiasts there Ironically, Onderdonk took up residence in Oak Cliff in July 1889, a year before Reaugh moved to that community near Dallas Onderdonk taught art in Dallas as well as assisting with the annual state fair’s art department,

a duty which he shared with Reaugh in 1904 By 1896, Onderdonk

Another artist impactful on early Texas art—albeit as a brief visitor and whose contributions are only recently becoming appreciated— was “distinguished American painter” Thomas Allen (1849–1924) Allen visited the Alamo city in the winter of 1878–79 while on a

tour of the American West According to scholar Cecilia Steinfeldt,

“the artist lingered long enough in San Antonio to paint his famous

Mexican Plaza as well as several other scenes in and around the city.”

Among these paintings are scenes of Mexican herdsmen,

oxen-drawn carretas, cattle, and horses, probably painted on the prairies

west of San Antonio

Allen studied at Washington University in Saint Louis then took an 1869 trip to the Rocky Mountains He later studied in Paris and Dusseldorf, followed by a temporary residence at Ecouen, France, outside Paris Allen traveled to Belgium, Bavaria, The Netherlands, and England, during his time abroad He eventually settled in Boston where he became a fairly successful businessman

Born in Illinois, John Clifford Cowles (1861–1951) may have studied at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in New York and was a disciple of Albert Bierstadt He may have studied in Paris Cowles exhibited in Salt Lake City in 1894 and his large painting of Shoshone Falls hangs in the Idaho State House

He also painted in Montana, Idaho, Utah, and New Mexico, and

Cowles may have had mining properties in Nevada and Utah and by

1900 had settled in Los Angeles where he exhibited at the California state fair One of his portraits is in the collection of the National Por-trait Gallery inWashington, D C Cowles authored the 1932 science

In 1887 Charles Goodnight commissioned Cowles to paint the

J A Ranch headquarters and the “Old Home Ranch” in the lower Palo Duro These two paintings are the earliest known oil paintings of Palo Duro Canyon and have become significant early Texas works of art and historical documents of Texas history In the Palo Duro/Old Home Ranch painting Cowles clearly shows Bierstadt’s influence, perhaps even exaggerating the topography for dramatic effect, as was his mentor’s wont Frank Reaugh would paint and photograph Palo Duro Canyon, the Goodnight ranch, and the T Anchor Ranch (the headquarters of which was built by Goodnight’s brothers-in-law, Walter and Leigh Dyer, 1877), in 1893

After Colonel Goodnight gave the two Cowles paintings to the Potter County Federation of Women (later Amarillo Federation of Women’s Clubs) in 1926 the paintings deteriorated badly Two fac-tors may have played a role in the deterioration: Goodnight’s use

of buffalo tallow as a cleaning agent for paintings and heat from radiators at the clubhouse over which the paintings were hung The Clubs eventually donated the badly damaged paintings to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum for safe-keeping and for eventual conservation Both paintings have been conserved and

When the Fort Worth & Denver City Railway arrived at Ragtown near Wild Horse Lake in today’s Potter County, Texas, in September

1887, Amarillo was born By 1888, the Southern Kansas Railway of Texas (a subsidiary of the Santa Fe Railway) reached Amarillo By

1890, Texas Panhandle ranchers were sending their cattle to market

by rail to Kansas City, not to downstate Texas The Pecos & North Texas and the Rock Island & Gulf railways reached Amarillo by

1900 Amarillo became the largest cattle-shipping point in the world and Kansas City had cornered the western cattle market by this time Consequently, cattlemen returned home with furnishings and fine and decorative art from the first Findlay Gallery in Kansas City as well as other places Findlay Gallery would also play a significant role in Frank Reaugh’s career Ironically, given his focus on Texas cattle, in his theatre of operations in West Texas, cattle served as the currency to bring art and culture to that great expanse

From 1836 to 1890, Texas art was in its infancy As the more rigorous duties of frontier life fell by the wayside, more time was given over to the practice and enjoyment of the visual arts The hardships of this period of Texas history cannot be overempha-sized where the creation of an art community is concerned In addition, the few art enclaves that existed were centered around the German communities of New Braunfels and Fredericksburg,

the mexcla of Spanish, Mexican, and German San Antonio, and the

recently formed, relatively Anglo, settlements of Austin and ton Other areas of the Republic, and later the state, were relatively depressed where art was concerned, and Dallas and its surrounding

Hous-communities such as Terrell, near which Frank Reaugh first settled, were not exceptions.

The Austin Daily Democratic Statesman felt that certainly by the

time of Reaugh’s arrival in the state, Texas artists had also arrived, positing in July 1877: “If you people knew that we have here artists

of genuine merit, with reputations wider than the limits of our state, [you] would surely give them a liberal patronage, but true merit is ever modest, and few know there are modest, hard working, painstaking men [and women] of genius who receive patronage and

In 1876, Frank Reaugh arrived in a Texas fecund for artistic exploration but lacking a recognizable and available art community His peers, of whom he undoubtedly knew very little, were few and geographically far away His knowledge of art was limited to periodi-cals and prints, most of which were concerned with art in the East rather than that of his chosen home state Consequently Reaugh was left to his own devices until at least 1884 His initial encounters with his fellow Texas artists, the first of whom was probably Robert Onderdonk, came about 1890 Reaugh was thus an important, yet independent, component of Texas art history in the last quarter of the nineteenth-century

Learning the Ropes

Charles Franklin reaugh, later to be known as Frank, was born on 29 December 1860, in Morgan County, Illinois, near Jacksonville He was the only child of George Washington Reaugh (1827–1907) and Clarinda Spilman Reaugh (1832–1905) until a girl, Mamie (1869–1956), was adopted after the family’s move to Texas in 1876 When he was still a boy, he and his family moved

to  Murrayville, Illinois Both of his parents’ families had come from Kentucky before settling in Illinois The elder Reaugh’s family practiced farming; Reaugh’s maternal grandfather was

a Presbyterian minister Reaugh’s father had participated in the Gold Rush of 1849 His mother was a teacher both in and outside the church

By the early 1850s, Texas cattle were being driven or shipped

to Illinois to be fattened and Morgan County, Illinois, benefitted

In fact, in 1850 the county had the highest density of beef cattle per hundred acres of any Illinois county Morgan County remained

In 1868 over 35,000 Texas cattle were feeding in central Illinois, and in 1870 over 200,000 head of Texas cattle had been received

Texan or otherwise, may have been spawned by his childhood exposure to the large numbers of cattle found in his home county between 1860 and 1876

2

C h a p t e r

But what was the Texas that met the emigrants from Illinois

in 1876? Between 1870 and 1890, Texas took giant leaps forward

in terms of its population The Houston & Texas Central Railroad arrived in Dallas in 1872 followed by its extension the following year

to Sherman, where it met the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad The Texas & Pacific reached Dallas from Marshall by the end of 1873, extended to Fort Worth by 1876, and reached Sierra Blanca by the end of 1881 This rail network eventually opened north Texas

to markets on the Pacific coast, the Northeast, and the Midwest Consequently, Dallas saw a population boom of 600 percent between

1870 and 1880 The railroads provided a means to get East Texas lumber and cotton to markets in the west Cattle, cotton, and lumber brought newly gained wealth to the state Texas evolved from an almost exclusively agricultural economy in the latter part of the nineteenth century and became more industrialized

The trail-driving industry that attracted Frank Reaugh—and

which he very likely was the only artist to paint while it was happening—

was reaching its zenith during the second half of the nineteenth century Edward Piper trailed 1,000 head of Texas cattle to Ohio

in the first recorded large cattle drive in 1846 In the late 1840s and 1850s, some Texas cattle were driven northeastward over the Shawnee Trail to Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio, where local farmers bought most of these beeves then fattened them for local slaughter markets Drovers who used the Shawnee Trail gathered cattle from the areas of Austin, Waco, and Dallas, then crossed the Red River near Preston, Texas, and followed the east-ern line of Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) North of Fort Gibson (near present-day Tulsa) the cattle route split in different branches toward St Louis, Sedalia, Independence, Westport, and Kansas City, and Baxter Springs and other eastern Kansas towns

Called the cattle trail, the Sedalia Trail, the Kansas Trail, or simply “the trail,” the Shawnee Trail may have referred to a Shawnee Indian village or the Shawnee Hills along the route It followed a hunting and raiding trail long traveled by American Indians and also by southbound settlers from the Midwest, who called it the Texas Road Largely obsolete by the Civil War, when the Reaughs

arrived in Texas the Shawnee Trail was virtually unused for cattle going north, but they likely used the Texas Road to come to Texas

In 1866, drovers initially used the old Shawnee Trail to Kansas City

or Sedalia, given their railroad-shipment capabilities, but ing fears of “Texas fever” and violence against drovers basically eliminated the old trail from use Some Texas drovers herded cattle

longstand-to sell longstand-to ’49ers during the California gold rush

Throughout the Civil War most Texas cattle ran wild across Texas, where they multiplied Illinois cattle buyer and business-man Joseph G McCoy convinced Kansas Pacific Railway officials

to build sidings and spurs at Abilene, Kansas—away from the more settled areas of the state—for loading Texas cattle in 1867 Before the Kansas legislature enacted new quarantines in 1873, around 1.5  million Texas cattle were driven to Abilene and shipped via trains

to cattle-processing plants in Kansas City, St Louis, and Chicago.Between 1867 and 1884, the Chisholm Trail was the primary route for Texas cattlemen to drive their herds to Kansas railheads After 1871, the drives might end at Newton, Junction City, Caldwell, Wichita, or Ellsworth, Kansas Starting in South Texas, the trail passed near Fort Worth, then east of Decatur, Texas, then crossed the river at Red River Station Wayne Gard described the Chisholm Trail as “a gigantic upside-down tree with many branches The trunk extended from Brownsville north to the Red River Feeder

In 1874 John T Lytle blazed a new trail farther west when he took a herd from South Texas to the Red Cloud (Sioux) Indian Agency at Fort Robinson, Nebraska After the Red River War, the Western Trail (also called the Dodge City Trail and the Fort Griffin Trail) began to sup-plant the Chisholm as the main route north By 1879 the Western Trail was the main cattle road to northern markets The main trail, with mul-tiple feeder trails, crossed the Brazos at Seymour and the Pease near the site of Vernon then crossed the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red

at Doan’s Crossing Alternate routes across Indian Territory concluded

at Dodge City on the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe railhead,

or continued across Kansas to the Union Pacific railhead at Ogallala, Nebraska Three to five million cattle walked up the Western Trail

The importance of feeder trails to the understanding of the trail network cannot be overstated Wayne Gard quoted an old-timer,

T C Richardson, who observed: “We shall get rid of a good deal

of geographical difficulty at once by recalling that trails originated wherever a herd was shaped up and ended wherever a market was found A thousand minor trails fed the main routes, and many an old-timer who as a boy saw a herd of stately Longhorns piloted by bandanaed, booted, and spurred men, lived with the firm conviction

Cattle trails