Frank Tenney Johnson

born Pottawattamie County, 1874; died Pasdena, California, 1939

BiographyFrank Tenney Johnson grew up watching wagon trains head west from his home near the Overland Trail in Iowa. At the age of 14 he apprenticed with F. W. Heine, a panorama painter in Milwaukee who specialized in painting horses. In 1895 an inheritance enabled him to study at the Art Students League in New York for a brief period before returning to Milwaukee to work as a commercial artist. He later returned to New York to study at the Art Students League under Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase, and John Henry Twachtman. Johnson made his first trip to Colorado and New Mexico on a commission from Field and Stream in 1904, an experience that confirmed his decision to focus on western subjects. He purchased a home in Alhambra, California, in 1921 and traveled throughout the West in the 1920s and 1930s, eventually also acquiring property near Cody, Wyoming. Johnson was a highly successful illustrator of books and of magazines such as Harper’s and Cosmopolitan as well as a fine artist. He was particularly known for his nocturnes—or nighttime images—of the West.

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