249

VERSO
Label, Christie’s, New York, New York
Label, The Owings Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Johnson biographer Harold McCracken offered the following account: “There is an indication he [Johnson] was doing considerably more sketching and paintings, particularly in a rocky canyon, where he had been studying the colors in the shadows at different times of the day, from early morning until under the glow of the moonlight. ‘I’ve been experimenting with colors,’ he wrote: ‘the way Maxfield Parrish gets his peculiar techniques. It’s an attractive effect indeed and I’ll make good use of it.’ It seems that this experience and the influence of the deep and extraordinary blues which distinguished so many of the fine paintings done by Maxfield Parrish, together with the study of colors under the effects of moonlight in a deep rocky canyon near Hayden, may well have been the beginning of the very distinctive nocturnes which later became the hallmark of Frank Tenney Johnson as an extraordinary artist.”

In the March 24, 1928 issue of the Los Angeles Times, Fred Hogue wrote, “Russell knew the riders of the Northwest, but Russell is dead. Remington knew the cowboy and his mount and the whole story of the Old West; but Remington is dead. When Johnson is gone, the last of this trilogy of the trail and the range will have passed. As a painter of nocturnes, Frank Tenney Johnson is the peer of any artist that ever came out of the West. Russell and Remington could paint the sunlight, but when the twilight shadows began to fall they cleansed their brushes, assembled their canvases and withdrew.… Perhaps Frank Tenney Johnson is a poet who sings in color. There is a harmony in his canvases that escapes our five senses.… His best is equal to the best in any company. He possesses the secret of color, of light and shade, of technique and composition. Perhaps, when he is dead, other lovers of the beautiful will write of him and his art what I have here written.”

PROVENANCE
Private collection, Dallas, Texas, 1995
Jerry Freeman, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2005
Private collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico

LITERATURE
Harold McCracken, The Frank Tenney Johnson Book, Doubleday, 1974, p. 180, illustrated

Additional Resources

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Condition ReportSurface is in good condition. Canvas is lined with faint hairline cracks and spots of inpainting.

Important Notice: Statements of condition are provided as a service to potential bidders and reflect educated opinions, not facts. All painting frames are sold “as is.” The Coeur d’Alene Art Auction assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions.