Frank Tenney Johnson

This week (while at the Charles Dayton Art Clinic) I've had the delightful opportunity of reading a book about Frank Tenney Johnson.

Early in the morning and late at night I'd sneak in a page or two.  He is one of my favorite artists. 

This is the first painting of his that I ever say.  It's called Morning Shower. 

He spent time cowboying in the mountains of Colorado, and fell in love with the West.  He wrote letters home to his wife in New York describing the beauty of the mountains and the mesas of the southwest.  I notice that he's always putting boulders and rocks in his work.  He was just starting his art career when Remington was old - so they sort of overlapped.

I wish I could steal high quality images better :)  I like this photo.  He looks like Will Rogers.  The real cowboys always liked him and would pose for him and help him out.

Johnson perfected "The Nocturne" or night painting.  Many of his most famous paintings have a cowboy riding night herd, or of cattle bedded down for the night.  He was amazing.  I loved one of his quotes from the book so much that I copied it down.  He was writing a note to his niece and this is what he said:

"Now I must answer your question as best I can.

"I am doing fairly well in drawing and painting, but there is lots of room for improvement.  Every time I draw a picture I try to make it better than the last one, and that's what you must try to do.  I am pleased to know that you want to be an artist and I shall do all I possibly can to help you be one...

"You must remember, Genevieve, that art is only a way each of us expresses ourselves, and show to others how we feel.  After the snows of winter are gone, and you hear the frogs singing in the pond, and the little chipmunks scamper along the old rail fence while the crows make a big fuss in the woods, and the robins and bluebirds are looking for a place to build their nest, you go out into the woods to pick the first lovely mayflowers as the peep through the leafy mould, and with the warm cheerful sun upon you, there comes a feeling within you which cannot be described in words.  A photograph, full of perfect detail could not tell another person how you felt that day, but it is possible that a drawing or painting or certain music could describe the sensations that you felt on this lovely spring day, and that is Art."

The Frank Tenny Johnson Book, by Harold McCracken, pg. 115