Frank Tenney Johnson was an Iowa farm boy raised in Pottawattamie County. He attended the Milwaukee School of Art in 1893, where he apprenticed with Western painters F. W. Heinie and Richard Lorenz. He moved to New York in 1895, continuing his studies at the Art Students’ League.
While in New York, Johnson met Emerson Hough, a well-known western writer, and editor of Field & Stream magazine. Hough sent him to Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico to observe western life. The trip was a life-changing event that led Johnson to focus on Western subjects. From 1904 to 1920, he was an illustrator for Field & Stream, Harper’s, Cosmopolitan, and Scribner’s magazines.
He illustrated several books, including Wildfire by Zane Grey, The Short Cut, and Jackson Valley by Jackson Greggory, and Poor Man’s Rock by Bertrand W. Sinclair.
Johnson moved to Alhambra, California, in the early 1920s, changing his focus from illustrating to oil painting. Over time, he established relationships with Western painters Charles M. Russell and Edward Borein.
A November 1, 1936, article in The Los Angeles Times said Johnson knew the anatomy of the horse better than any living artist. The writer of that article suggested Johnson possessed “that grain of madness which is characteristic of genius unalloyed.”
The Los Angeles Evening Express suggested there was a “quietness, a stillness about his moonlights that is positively refreshing.” They commented you could see the cowboy throwing his lariat in his painting, “On the Open Range.”
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