The Approaching Herd

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 This mural is a faithful reproduction of the 1902 Frank Reaugh painting The Approaching Herd.  Reaugh used his sketches and photographs from Terrell and West Texas  for the composition. The artist wrote, “These Longhorn Texas cattle depicted were beautiful animals but were very wild. Many of them had  never seen a man on foot before. People walking were sometimes treed by  them. It would have happened oftener if there had been more trees.” -  Frank Reaugh, Paintings of the Southwest, 1937.
 

 Charles Franklin Reaugh, born Dec 29, 1860, moved with his family to  Terrell in 1876. He taught art in Terrell for a time. In 1890, he and  his parents moved to Dallas where he established his “Ironsides” studio,  but continued to visit Terrell until his death in 1945 at the age of  84. He is buried with his family at Oakland Memorial Cemetery in  Terrell. Reaugh traveled the West, capturing scenes to be used in his  realistic but poetic images of the vistas, Longhorn herds,  and the cowboy life that was Texas. Reaugh once said “no  animal on earth has the beauty of the Texas steer.” He studied art in St Louis, and at the Academie Julian in  Paris, France. His paintings are displayed at the Harry Ransom Center at  The University of Texas at Austin, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum  in Canyon, Southwest Collection Library at Texas Tech University in  Lubbock and the Texas Capitol Historical Art Collection in Austin.  

 This mural was painted as a tribute to Frank Reaugh by artist Charlie Bullock of Athens, Texas.