The Frank Tenney Johnson Book
   Harold McCracken
  1974 Doubleday & Co.Inc. Garden City NY USA
   ISBN: 0385078579


The only artist of the American West to be recognised as a full National Academician, Frank Tenney Johnson brings all the beauty of that wild, colorful land to canvas. While FTJ's opus is moderate it is renowned for its lack of violence & lack of portrayals of the "red man" as a wistful savage.

With Frank Tenney Johnson's birth in 1874 on a pioneer prairie farm, his childhood beside the Overland Trail to Council Bluffs, Iowa, & his student years in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Harold McCracken recreates this boy's family ties & the era which would form this budding artist.

Although FTJ's works may not number as many as Remington's or Russell's, they have an energy, passion & feel about them that evokes the light & shadow, drama & power of the American West. From his earliest works, this artist was fascinated, absorbed by landscape, by the mystery of misty days & stillness of moonlit nights.

Living the life of a roaming artist out on the frontier, with all its discomforts & beguiling romance, Frank Tenney Johnson with his beloved wife Vinnie, followed his passion, refining his skill as he sketched Conestoga wagons on rocky hillsides; oxen & ploughs on prairies; waiting saddled horses & running remudas; fabled cowboys guarding cattle herds; trees, sagebrush & moonlight. From his earliest works his love of horses & the men who rode them is fully expressed.

FTJ lived what he painted especially around cow towns like Hayden, Colorado & on his travels he would bring to his canvas all the colors & textures he saw. Then the camera caught up with him & his works became more exacting.

If you have not seen a Frank Tenney Johnson mural or canvas, do check him out. His pen & ink sketches are humorous & exquisitely detailed. His canvases of cowboys along moonlit trails are stunning. You can almost smell the horse, the leather & the sagebrush.

FTJ strove for magic & a moment in time that was ever bright: a flash of orange as a cowboy lights a smoke; sunset drenching mountains in amber awe; canyons of shadow & sunshine; misty mornings & moonlight, moonlight, moonlight.

This artist was thrilled by the light of night & when he traveled south to the borderlands, his skills & his passions became one. For us, a century later, looking at his nighttime canvases is to remember what life was like before we lit up the dark to keep our terrors away.

Before there were movies, before there were movies in color, Frank Tenney Johnson brought to canvas - almost as large as life - the colors, sights & action we've come to know as the Wild American West.

This huge old tome always rekindles the heat & passion of those times & those places in all their brilliant hues, stark shadows & seductive topography.

Harold McCracken has composed a worthy biography of this Great American Artist. I can only hope that the 4000 copies of The Frank Tenney Johnson Book of Western Paintings are still available in libraries & secondhand stores.

The books of Harold McCracken, Litt,D., LHD., are legion & include the following:
Iglaome; God's Frozen Children 1930
Pershing: The Story of a Great Soldier 1931
The Biggest Bear on Earth 1943
The Great White Buffalo 1946
Frederic Remington, Artist of the Old West 1947
The Story of Alaska 1956
The Charles M. Russell Book 1957
Roughnecks and Gentlemen 1968.
(03/12/00)

Rebecca