Frank Tenney Johnson (1874-1939)

Hiro Fine Art is interested in purchasing artworks by Frank Tenney Johnson.

Frank Tenney Johnson was a pre-modern painter known for his dark and moody Wild West scenes. Born in Iowa, Johnson often watched travelers in horse drawn carriages moving westward. Moving to Milwaukee at ten, he apprenticed with a painter who focused on a similar subject matter of horses and westward scenes, the same imagery that Johnson too began to paint. Though he painted the popular cowboy scenes, his style is highly unique due to his training in New York under great pre-modern artists such as Robert Henri and William Merritt Chase. He became famous for his images, as well as writings, in Field and Stream but continued to push his art by traveling and painting the western United States. He became even more established and was recognized nationwide, creating close relationships with other famous artists. With financial stability, he was able to move to Los Angeles and open galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Cody, Wyoming. At the peak of his career, in 1939, he contracted meningitis from kissing a hostess at a party and died tragically within a day.