VERSO
Label, Gallery of the Masters, St. Louis, Missouri
Label, The Jamison Galleries, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Label, Kennedy Galleries, New York, New York

Frank Tenney Johnson’s skill in the saddle gave him a unique ability to accurately capture the cowboy experience in his art. As his biographer Harold McCracken noted: “As with so many other young men who came out into the great West, the free and rugged life on the open cattle range in the Colorado back country appealed strongly to Frank Tenney Johnson. He was reluctant to leave. There is little doubt that he could have become a good working cowboy or eventually a successful cattleman. He had all the qualifications and instincts inherited from his ancestors and own boyhood on a small Iowa farm. He liked the Colorado cowboys and their bosses; and he had a ‘way with horses’ that comes naturally to some people. He thoroughly enjoyed riding a spirited horse and had no fear of sending his horse at full speed in pursuit of a bovine bolter through brushy places where the next stop might be into a badger hole. For a good many reasons important to the cowboys he had become ‘accepted’ into their special fraternity.”

PROVENANCE
Private collection, Saint Charles, Missouri

LITERATURE
Ed Ainsworth, The Cowboy in Art, The World Publishing Company, 1968, center spread, illustrated

• Frank Tenney Johnson’s Past Results

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