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SOUTH COAST FINE ART DEALERS
South Coast Fine Art dealers specialize in purchasing important works of art from the 17th through the early 20th century. Every year we preview and participate in literally hundreds of private sales, art shows, gallery showings and auctions. We are in constant search for fine works to purchase. Please contact us today to discuss the sale of one of your paintings. Please note that our gallery only purchases original paintings - No Prints Please.
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Frank Tenney Johnson (1874 - 1939)
Using his fingers, brushes and palette knives, painter Frank Tenney Johnson would perfect his own remarkable techniques. Among his many stylings was the one referred to as the “Johnson Moonlight technique”; frequently depicting nocturnal cowboy scenes which was a method he became well known for.
Born in Iowa he had grown up wandering some of the same terrain explored by Lewis and Clark along the Overland Trail, and maybe this accounts for his later fixation with the American West, but whatever his initial influences Johnson decided early in his life that he would like to become a landscape painter.
After some initial studies under Richard Lorenz at the Milwaukee School of Art, Johnson headed to New York where he entered the Art Students League and began his studies under such well known artists as John Henry Twachtman and William Merritt Chase.
Early in this period he was hired as an illustrator for magazines, primarily Field and Stream, but additionally he did work for Harper’s and Cosmopolitan as well. Though he resided in New York he would make frequent trips west to gather materials for his illustrations, including time on a ranch in Colorado and later to the desert southwest where he first encountered Native Americans.
In 1920 he moved to California, and began to focus more time and attention on his easel paintings rather than his illustration work. He and his painting partner Clyde Forsythe founded the Biltmore Art Gallery at this time as well.
From 1931 to the end of his life he spent most of his time at the studio he built in Cody, Wyoming. He would spend his time doing studies and sketches in Yellowstone National Park and then the rest of his time at his easel. His love of the American West never faded, and he died at the pinnacle of his career in 1939 from spinal meningitis.
His paintings are found in numerous museums throughout the world, and today his work still brings incredibly high prices at auction.
Born in Iowa he had grown up wandering some of the same terrain explored by Lewis and Clark along the Overland Trail, and maybe this accounts for his later fixation with the American West, but whatever his initial influences Johnson decided early in his life that he would like to become a landscape painter.
After some initial studies under Richard Lorenz at the Milwaukee School of Art, Johnson headed to New York where he entered the Art Students League and began his studies under such well known artists as John Henry Twachtman and William Merritt Chase.
Early in this period he was hired as an illustrator for magazines, primarily Field and Stream, but additionally he did work for Harper’s and Cosmopolitan as well. Though he resided in New York he would make frequent trips west to gather materials for his illustrations, including time on a ranch in Colorado and later to the desert southwest where he first encountered Native Americans.
In 1920 he moved to California, and began to focus more time and attention on his easel paintings rather than his illustration work. He and his painting partner Clyde Forsythe founded the Biltmore Art Gallery at this time as well.
From 1931 to the end of his life he spent most of his time at the studio he built in Cody, Wyoming. He would spend his time doing studies and sketches in Yellowstone National Park and then the rest of his time at his easel. His love of the American West never faded, and he died at the pinnacle of his career in 1939 from spinal meningitis.
His paintings are found in numerous museums throughout the world, and today his work still brings incredibly high prices at auction.
