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  • Frank Tenney Johnson
    Jun 26, 1874 - Jan 1, 1939
  • Cowboys Roping the Bear - Frank Tenney Johnson was born near Big Grove, Iowa and would become an important early 20th-century American Western artist. Raised on a farm on the old Overland Trail, he observed the western migration of people on horseback and in stage coaches and covered wagons. This exposure to the American West would prove to be an important influence and inspiration for Johnson as an artist and painter of the American West.
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Cowboys Roping the Bear
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  • Cowboys Roping the Bear

  • Frank Tenney Johnson
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  • Oil on canvas laid on board
    26.25 x 36.25 inches

    According to Harold McCracken, “It was naturally with strong mingled emotions that Frank went down to the railroad depot to get onto the stage that early morning of May 18, 1904. He had a strong sense of anticipation that much of great importance to his future lay ahead. In addition he was looking forward to the thrill of just riding all day on the old-time stagecoach through a mountain wonderland with which he had already fallen deeply in love. More important was the question of what would happen when he reached the destination at the little town of Hayden in the heart of the cowboy and cattle country about which he had dreamed continuously since leaving New York. ...

    “Frank Tenney Johnson stayed with the roundup and rode with the working cowboys, as one of them, until the roundup of the cattle, branding of the calves and separating of the cattle was completed on July 11. Throughout it all he continued to write about practically everything that happened. It is an exceptional record. He also made sketches in addition to the large number of photographs. ... Frank continued to make himself sufficiently useful to be looked upon as ‘one of the bunch.’ More important, he got an intimate insight and indoctrination into cowboy life and cattle roundups that was probably equal to that of any other artist who undertook to portray these cavaliers of the American West for the benefit of future generations.”

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Other paintings by Frank Tenney Johnson:

Cowboy Race
Cowboy Race
Cowboy Sport: Roping the Coyote
Cowboy Sport: Roping the Coyote
Coyote Moonrise
Coyote Moonrise
Coyote Nocturne
Coyote Nocturne
Frank Tenney JohnsonFrank Tenney Johnson was among the most reflective, introspective artists ever to paint the West. His love for the vanishing West of the cowboy was perhaps engendered in him by the close proximity of his birthplace near Council Bluffs, Iowa, to the Overland Trail. Even as a young man Johnson sensed that his career would have to be that of an artist of the Old West.

In 1895 Johnson made his way to New York, where he eventually studied at the Art Students League and with such fine art notables as J.H. Twachtman, Robert Henri and William Merritt Chase. His first professional work came to Johnson in the form of illustration commissions for Zane Grey novels and for Field and Stream and other periodicals. In many ways, however, his first professional work came in the form of a 1904 trip to Colorado and the Southwest, a trip that Johnson was to make many times in his life. The trip seemed to bring into focus an impression of the Old West that made Johnson famous.

Johnson was an excellent draftsman. He used the best materials available to an artist. As did others, Johnson painted with brush, knife and fingers. Above all, Johnson painted scenes of the West that were tableau-like; he rendered romantic, poetic Western genre scenes that differed entirely from the stop-action, narrative works of his contemporaries, C.M. Russell and Frederic Remington. Johnson painted scenes that reflected his preference for non-violent subjects, scenes that showed the cowboy, the Indian or the Spanish settler in a pastoral context. Among these quiet, philosophical canvases two types stand out: his paintings of horses and his night scenes.

Eventually, Johnson became a renowned artist with studios in Los Angeles; Cody, Wyoming; and New York. He was collected by major institutions including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Royal Palace in Copenhagen; and Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum. In 1937 Johnson became an Academician of the National Academy of Design.

At the peak of his career Johnson's life came to an unusually unfortunate end. In December, 1938, Johnson attended a party, where he gave a social kiss to his hostess. Within two weeks' time, both were dead of spinal meningitis. In Frank Tenney Johnson's death, the United States lost one of the most accomplished artists ever to love the Old West.