Rounded Up in Glory: Frank Reaugh, Texas Renaissance Man by Michael R. Grauer (review)

It is fitting, as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Chisholm Trail, to review Michael Grauer's book about the art of Frank Reaugh. The era of the great cattle drives was also the time when Frank Reaugh's family moved to Texas and a young Frank began developing his interest in observing and drawing cattle. Reaugh's lifelong love of the American Great Plains was to be the lifeblood of his art.

Reaugh stated, "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" (Frank Reaugh, Biographical [Dallas, self-published, 1936], n.p.).

Having grown up near the Concho River, I like to think that Reaugh did some of his painting near my home. This book documents that on a 1933 sketch trip, he traveled to Brownwood and on toward Santa Anna peaks in Coleman County, my home county. He wanted to be at the source for his paintings, and this close proximity to the actual land is reflected in his art. He designed a portable sketch easel to use on these trips.

His art has a contemporary quality that makes it seem current, even today. Reaugh's art is much more contemporary, even for our twenty-first-century eyes, than works by other prominent western artists of the same time period. Marked differences in his art and that of other artists working in the western genre perhaps are due to Reaugh's dedication to making sketch trips to the actual land where the cattle were grazing. The way Reaugh captures the wide-open spaces, the colors, and movement of the herds is unique to his art, and often harkens toward impressionism. Reaugh even developed his own line of pastels which he marketed.

His presentation of art, music, and narration, and his exploration of the relationships in the arts, are all an indication of Reaugh's progressive spirit. For several years he worked in this multi-art environment, with his major contribution being Twenty-Four Hours with the Herd. Reaugh debuted this piece November 9, 1933, in Highland Park Galleries in Dallas. He collaborated with Texan David W. Guion, who composed the music. Grauer states, "To bring together—to orchestrate—painting, music, and prose in one production was brilliant and very progressive" (233). The multimedia performance of Twenty-Four Hours with the Herd was repeated at numerous other venues, including a performance at Baylor University on April 18 and 19, 1935.

Reaugh's exclusion from the Centennial art celebration in Texas is a sad commentary on the art community at that time. It is particularly disappointing to me, a native Texan whose parents attended the Centennial Celebration in Dallas in 1936, that Reaugh's art was ignored at this historic celebration of 100 years as a state. That an artist who spent months camping and sketching on the Texas land, taking groups of fellow artists with him on these trips, painting the land and its cattle, to not be included in the Texas section of the art exhibition indicates a severe lack of good judgment on the part of the Centennial organizers.

As he said in 1936, "It is my hope that my pictures portraying those times, aside from any artistic merit that they may possess, will tell their story, and will be preserved because of historical value; for the steer and the cowboy have gone, the range has been fenced and plowed, and the beauty of the early days is but a memory" (Frank Reaugh, Biographical, n.p.). The following quote from the Heritage Auctions webpage indicates that Reaugh's art continues to be valued, despite the...