Provenance: Private collection, New York Born and raised in the Midwest, but trained professionally in New York City, Frank Tenney Johnson first went West in 1904 as part of an illustration assignment for Field & Stream. The trip would set the course of the rest of his career. “Johnson’s success as an easel painter of the ‘wide open spaces’ resulted from his studies, his location in New York and Los Angeles, his passion for his subject, and his determined perseverance,” writes Melissa J. Webster in Frank Tenney Johnson and the American West. “He steadfastly devoted his life to becoming a painter, and he succeeded. Although Johnson did not practice the Munich style or American or French Impressionism, he was influenced by these innovative modes of expression as interpreted by [John Henry] Twachtman, [William Merritt] Chase, [Robert] Henri, and others, as well as by [Maxfield] Parrish’s color and [Frederic] Remington’s nocturnes. But Johnson developed his masterful style out of these artistic elements, creating a romanticized realism with the unwavering purpose to record for future generations our Western heritage.”