The Master of Moonlight

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Two Figures at Dusk Oil Frank Tenney Johnson

There is an otherworldly magic in a moonlit scene. We love to paint at night under the moon’s steady, cool glow. Perhaps the best known modern painter of moonlight in American art was Frank Tenney Johnson, 1874 - 1939. Johnson studied painting under William Merritt Chase, Robert Henri and John Henry Twachtman in New York. He began his career as an illustrator, painting outdoor scenes for Field and Stream magazine. He soon convinced the editor of Field and Stream to send him west on extensive trips where he would gather the reference materials for his paintings for the magazine. These paintings were so successful that it was not long before he was also illustrating book covers for western novels, notably the Zane Grey books.

Johnson loved to paint cowboys and Indians going about their daily lives, especially the Navajo. On an early western trip, Johnson noticed that the Navajo Indians he had been studying preferred t…