TitleSouthern Night
Artist
Frank Tenney Johnson
(American, 1874 - 1939)
Date1927
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 28 × 36 in.
Framed: 33 7/8 × 41 15/16 × 2 3/8 in.
SignedSigned at lower left: "F. Tenney Johnson A. N. A. / 1927".
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, December 6, 1937
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number673-P
Label Text"Southern Night" is a typical painting by Frank Tenney Johnson showing an adobe house with two horses in the foreground. Johnson was born in Iowa before the family moved to Wisconsin, where the artist began his training. In 1902 Johnson studied with Robert Henri at the New York School of Art, and two years later he had a successful exhibition of western paintings. Eventually, Johnson would establish his home in Alhambra, California, where he developed an extensive collection of western hats, boots, saddles, ropes, and weapons which were useful props for his paintings as well as a personal extension of his fascination with the Western genre.On his biographical questionnaire for the National Academy, Johnson wrote:
"Born beside The Overland Trail on the prairie in South-Western Iowa, and having been reared in the Cattle Business, with its wild life in the open, it was but natural that I should choose the painting of Western Life as the means of expressing myself. As a boy I saw the long lines of Prairie Schooners and the Stage Coaches on the winding Overland Trail: the Long-horned Texas cattle and the cattlemen.
Since then I have been so busy exploring all parts of the West - associating with and living the life of the Mountain-man, Trapper, Cowboy, Prospector, and depicting on canvas the many phazes [sic] of Western Life which I have witnessed, and are now but a memory, that I haven't had time to visit Europe, but I hope to do so some day."
