1419
Tex and Patches
FES Title: U.S. Printing And Litho Co., For Colt Arms, changing size and general color scheme of Rex “Randerson on Patches”
Alternate Titles:
Date: 11/30/1925
Size: 41.5″H x 24.5″W
Medium: oil_single-prime-canvas
Type: subject painting
Published: Colt’s Patent Firearms Company, (Poster) November 1926.
no caption

Drago, Sinclair. Desert Water. New York: The Macauley Co., 1933: spine.
no caption

Serven, James E. Colt Firearms. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1954: 160.
caption: Famous painting of a frontier sheriff which was reproduced by the Colt Company and distributed in the form of a large wall hanger. The artist, Frank E. Schoonover, wrote in 1926: The material for the picture was gathered from actual experience on ranches in Colorado and Montana. The painting is built up around the character of the man ‘Tex’ and his horse ‘Patches.’ Patches was probably the best and the most unpretentious cayuse in the cow country. He was ewe-necked and raw-boned but almost human when it was necessary to find a trail or get to camp on a black night. Tex and Patches just naturally made pictures when they were together, and it was always pretty fine to see them up on some little butte – horse and rider outlined against the sky. Tex would pull his foot out of the stirrup, turn a bit in the saddle, and look all about the country – just as you see him doing in the painting.” Tex favored the “Frontier” Colt revolver.

Schoonover, Cortlandt. Frank Schoonover, Illustrator of the North American Frontier. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1976: dust jacket and 52.
caption: Tex and Patches

Grey, Zane. The Ranger and Other Stories. Franklin Center, PA: The Franklin Library, 1979: 2.
no caption

[Skinner’s. “Military and Political Ephemera at Skinner’s.” Antique & The Arts Weekly, 21 February 1986: 30.
caption: Tex and Patches ] [not included in Catalogue Raisonne]

Rattenbury, Richard. The Art of American Arms Makers Marketing Guns, Ammunition and Western Adventure During the Golden Age of Illustration. Oklahoma City, OK: National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 2004.

Inscription: lr: Frank E. Schoonover / ’25
Annotations: en verso on side of wooden backing in Frank E. Schoonover’s handwriting:Tex Randerson on Patches Frank E. Schoonover
Exhibitions:
Comments: Trany [owner sent]; Form 2/21/03; index; edit
Relined.
Commentary: This painting is the altered version of #733. It was originally 36″ by 27,” but Schoonover was told that it needed to be 41.5 by 24.75 in order to facilitate printing. He was finally able to stretch the canvas to its present size to meet the requirement.
Schoonover also wrote a story about the image. It was to be distributed with six different documented posters showing versions of the original. Several versions of the poster were included in the exhibition,The Art of American Arms Makers Marketing Guns, Ammunition and Western Adventure During the Golden Age of Illustration, at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City (February 14 – May 16, 2004). See numbers 1419sa-1419sg for sketches.
Provenance: Sold by artist to John and Lucy Epstein, Wilmington, Delaware; Margaret Bunting, Mt. Shasta, California; C. Wesley Cowan, Cincinnati, Ohio (June 14, 2000); private collection