TROUBLE ON THE PONY EXPRESS BY FRANK TENNEY JOHNSON
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Frank Tenney Johnson Trouble On The Pony Express c. 1910 - 1920 Oil on canvas 36 1/4 inches x 28 1/4 inches |
| Frank Tenney Johnson was born in 1874 on a farm in Iowa, later moving to Milwaukee at the age of 14. He studied art there and in New York City until 1904, when he realized his childhood ambition to see the West. Five months in Colorado, Wyoming and the desert Southwest filled his reference files with oil sketches and hundreds of photographs of the Southwestern Indians. In 1912 he joined Charles Russell on a sketching expedition to the Blackfood Reservation east of Glacier National park in Montana and fondly recalled camping with him "in Joe Kipps buffalo-skin tepee...We sketched Indians together...Charlie was sure a white Indian and every one liked him." (Nancy Russell was another matter. Johnson remembered her coolness - she did not cotton to competitors - but Charlie "liked my work and said so emphatically." At the time Russell's most vivid impression of Johnson was of his eagerness to gather Indian souvenirs for his studio collection.) Johnson's considerable reputation was based on his fluid, painterly oils and his dramatic use of color. He favored nocturnes and sun-splashed scenes capturing the light early in the morning and late in the day when shadows and warm orange tones soften the floodlit clarity of mid-day. |