Artist Biography & Facts

William Henry Johnson

Known for distinctive modernist images of African American life, William Johnson died destitute and deranged from syphilis, having spent the last twenty-three years of his life in the Central Islip Sate Hospital on Long Island.  He stopped painting in 1956.

One of his chief sponsors and exhibitors for his art was the New York Harmon Foundation, which, in 1929, presented him the "Award for Distinguished Achievements Among Negroes in the Fine Arts Field." Most of his work was handed over to the Harmon Foundation, now defunct, by a court that deemed his works without value.  In turn the Foundation donated the work to the Smithsonian Institution, which had a retrospective of his work in 1970.

In 1997, a lawsuit was filed by his relatives claiming the Smithsonian Institution had over 1000 works on paper illegally.

Source:
Matthew Baigell, Dictionary of American Art

Born in 1901, Johnson left the poverty and racial restrictions of his life in South Carolina at age eighteen, to live with his uncle in New York City.  In 1922 he enrolled as a full-time student at the National Academy of Design, where he was encouraged by Charles Hawthorne, his teacher and mentor.  Johnson continued his studies at the Academy until 1926, and with Hawthorne¹s generous financial help, he left for Paris in 1927 to further develop as an artist.

After three months in Paris, Johnson moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer in the south of France where he met and fell in love with Holcha Krake, a Danish textile artist who was traveling with her sister and brother-in-law, the German artist, Christoph Voll. After visiting Denmark with Holcha, Johnson returned to the United States later that year.  In New York he was awarded the prestigious Harmon Foundation gold medal award and made a brief trip home to Florence in March 1928, where he painted several portraits of family and friends, as well as paintings of local scenes, such as the eruptive view of the Jacobia Hotel (National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution), and a brilliant, van Gogh-like Landscape with Sun Setting, Florence, S.C. (Howard University Gallery, Washington, D.C.)  At the conclusion of his visit in April, Johnson was honored with an exhibition at the Florence YMCA where 135 of his paintings were on view.

Johnson returned to Denmark in 1930 to marry Holcha and to begin in earnest his career as an artist.  The couple settled in Kerteminde, a small fishing village on the island of Funen where both artists could devote themselves fully to the making of art. In Holcha, Johnson found a most encouraging spouse and together they traveled the region, with Holcha arranging joint exhibitions of their work and newspaper interviews.  This exhibition features some of Johnson's best work from the 1930-31 period including Langegade, Kerteminde, a view of the town's main street, which counterbalances the turbulent, animate forms of the old church building on the right and the town hall on the far left of the canvas; Harbor, Kerteminde, with its agitated perspective, contrasting tones, and slashing brushstrokes; and Gammel Gaard (Old Farmhouse), a more pastoral, but still expressionistic work with its intense brushwork and color.

In 1932, the couple traveled to Tunisia where they learned from local artisans the making of ceramic tiles, a practice which would significantly affect Johnson's next phase of painting.  Beginning in 1933, he used a palette knife to thickly apply paint with the resulting surface often appearing very glossy and almost tile-like (Draby Church, c. 1934).  In 1935 the couple departed for Norway, where Johnson had a one-man show at the prominent Blomqvist Gallery in Oslo.  Included in this exhibition were several of the paintings shown here, including the portrait of
Erling Mikkelsen (c. 1934), a work revealing the artist¹s approach towards a greater simplicity of forms, with the use of heavy paint and impasto.  The exaggeration and placement of the boy's hands are elements he would later use in his American portraits.

From Oslo, he and Holcha ventured slowly northward through the popular scenic tourist region of Gudbrandsdal, arriving in the late summer for an extended residence in Volda on the western coast of Norway.  Volda Fjord in Spring (c. 1936-37) is similar to Johnson's previous Danish works in the way the paint is applied, but because of Norway's special light and majestic natural beauty, it reveals his new use of brighter and bolder colors.

In 1938, Johnson and Holcha returned to Denmark briefly before departing for New York City to escape the growing danger of Nazi Germany.  In New York, Johnson could not support himself solely on the making of art, so he took a job teaching at the Harlem Community Art Center where he also produced a significant amount of work.  One of two such works in this exhibition is the 1939 tempera painting, Street Scene, New York, which probably was a scene in Harlem.

In New York, Johnson increasingly turned his attention to portraying African-American life in a dramatic, flattened style.  For the first time in his career he also began to paint works from memory, creating images of farming, family, and religious life in rural South Carolina.  In the early 1940s, as Johnson accomplished his stated goal, "the painting of my own people," he translated the intensity of his earlier, European-based expressionism into a naïve-primitive style that depicted vibrant characters and cultures of black urban and rural life, as well as religious and
historical themes.

Distraught after Holcha's death from cancer in 1944, and disappointed that American collectors did not buy his works as readily as did Danes and Norwegians, Johnson decided that he would move to Europe after the war.  After an initial exhibition, Johnson fell ill in 1947, and was found to be suffering from symptoms brought on by advanced syphilis.  Late that year, he was returned to New York where he was institutionalized at the state hospital in Long Island.

Johnson never painted again, and his art went into storage under the care of a court-appointed guardian.  Most of these works were ultimately acquired by the National Collection of Fine Arts (now the Smithsonian Museum of American Art) which in 1991 mounted a major retrospective exhibition, "Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson."

The art works in this exhibition descend from different Danish and Norwegian collectors, all of whom acquired directly from the artist in the 1930s.  Then, between 1994 and 1997, each of these works was acquired by Steve Turner, collector, dealer and co-author of William H. Johnson: Truth Be Told.

Roberta Sokilitz 2002
©Robert M. Hicklin Jr., Inc.

WILLIAM HENRY JOHNSON (1901-1970)

Regarded as one of the most progressive painters of his day, William Henry Johnson was born in Florence, South Carolina, the son of an African American mother and absent white father. Growing up in modest circumstances, his early interest in art was sparked by copying comic strips that ran in the local newspaper. He left home at the age of seventeen, moved to Harlem, and, for the next three years, worked a series of menial jobs to underwrite his enrollment at the National Academy of Design in 1921. At the academy, Johnson received numerous honors and earned the crucial support of one particular instructor, Charles Hawthorne. Worried that “the youth’s talent would be crushed by poverty and prejudice,” Hawthorne played a key role in the promising artist’s development, sponsoring Johnson’s attendance at the Cape Cod School of Art and later raising money to underwrite a trip abroad.

Arriving in Paris in 1926, Johnson thrilled to the city’s vibrant cultural scene and its participants. His friendships with modern artists such as Henry Ossawa Tanner and the exposure to the works of Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Cézanne inspired Johnson to experiment with color and form in ways that transcended his formal academic training. During an extended sojourn to the French fishing village of Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1929, he met Holcha Krake, a Danish textile artist sixteen years his senior. Their unlikely courtship—given their differences in race, culture, and age—was briefly interrupted when, in late 1929, Johnson made a return visit to the United States in hopes of solidifying his American reputation. His submission of six paintings to the Harmon Foundation arrived after the application deadline that autumn, but was permitted to stand at the request of juror George Luks. The jury then voted unanimously to recognize Johnson with the gold Distinguished Achievement Award.

After marrying in 1930, the newlyweds set up house in Kerteminde, Denmark, a seaside tourist destination replete with subject matter. Johnson’s expressionistic paintings from this period—often depicting the charming harbor or countryside—are characterized by thick, energetic brushstrokes and a highly keyed palette. Although their exhibition opportunities were rather localized and resulted in few sales, the couple was quite happy, exploring the continent and making art. In 1938, the specter of world war became impossible to deny. The pair moved to New York, where Johnson eventually found employment with WPA initiatives.

The return to America was challenging and triggered a striking shift in Johnson’s paintings. Johnson abandoned the avant-garde style that had characterized his European pictures in favor of simpler contours and flat planes of color. Much of his new output was figurative and increasingly, as the artist described, “primitive.” “I myself feel like a primitive man . . . both a primitive and a cultured painter,” Johnson said. “My aim is to express in a natural way what I feel both rhythmically and spiritually—all that has been saved up in my family of primitiveness and tradition, and which is now concentrated in me.” Drawing on African American culture and history, as well as African lore, he executed several series of paintings that featured religious subjects, political themes, the rural South, and the modern military.

Tragedy struck in 1942 when Johnson’s Greenwich Village studio burned; two years later, Holcha died of breast cancer. Following a decade of incremental mental deterioration, Johnson suffered a complete psychiatric break in 1947 and was subsequently institutionalized until his death twenty-three years later.

The significance of William H. Johnson’s legacy might have been diminished if not for the support of the Harmon Foundation. In 1956, the Foundation was appointed trustee of Johnson’s entire estate. This estate consisted of over one thousand paintings, drawings, and prints that had been moldering in a New York City warehouse for nine years, the rent unpaid and the works untended. After cataloguing, conserving, framing, and safely storing the works, the Foundation lent Johnson’s works to major museum exhibitions and highlighted them in its own presentations and publications. When the Harmon Foundation ceased operations in 1967, it entrusted Johnson’s estate to what is now known as the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The donation agreement stipulated that the museum use the works to inspire people to “raise their sights and . . . feeling for art at the core of life.” That museum remains the largest repository of the artist’s oeuvre.

The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina
thejohnsoncollection.org