Background
Johnston was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on June 19, 1888. He was the son of Hugh Johnston and Elizabeth Roderick.
725 Bathurst St, Toronto, ON M5S 2R5, Canada
Central Technical School.
100 McCaul St, Toronto, ON M5T 1W1, Canada
Ontario College of Art and Design University.
118-128 N Broad St, Philadelphia, PA 19102, USA
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Grip Limited logo.
66 Chancellors Cir, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada
University of Manitoba.
Frank Johnston.
Group of seven artists, Frederick Varley, A. Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris, Fairley, Frank Johnston (artist), Arthur Lismer, and J. E. H. MacDonald.
Johnston was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on June 19, 1888. He was the son of Hugh Johnston and Elizabeth Roderick.
Franz Johnston was unusually well trained in academic practice. He started his studies with Gustav Hahn at the Central Technical School in Toronto in 1906, then moving to the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto in 1908, where he studied under the guidance of under William Cruikshank and G. A. Reid. In 1912 he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, studying under Philip Leslie Hale and Daniel Garber.
In 1911 Johnston worked at the commercial art firm Grip Limited in Toronto, where he met future Group of Seven members J.E.H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, and Franklin Carmichael. Later he began to work with the design firm, Carleton Studios in New York, returning to Toronto in 1915, where he spent much time producing landscapes and taking painting trips to Algonquin Park and Lake Superior. Johnston painted with Tempera paint, which varied him from other artists in the Group of Seven.
In 1917-1918 Franz Johnston was commissioned by the Canadian War Memorials to record the activities of Canadian flying personnel training for overseas duty. During this time he produced 73 paintings. In the late summer of 1918, he travelled to the wilderness of the Algoma region near Sault Ste. Marie with artists Lawren Harris, MacDonald and art patron Dr. James MacCallum. His work Camp Borden (1919), for instance, is a realistic depiction from an aerial point of view of two fighter planes soaring over a brown autumn landscape, the clouds mirroring the colour of the landscape.
In May of 1920, a group of painters including Johnston organized an exhibition of the Group of Seven for the first time at the Grange, Toronto, and were regarded as a truly Canadian movement. The same year, Johnson held the first of his numerous solo exhibitions at the Eaton's of Canada Gallery where the critics praised his handling of light.
Franz Johnston left Toronto in 1921 to become the principal of the Winnipeg School of Art, occupying the post from 1921 to 1924. Simultaneously, he was also the curator of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. He taught at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg in 1922 and later returned to Toronto, where he became a professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University between 1928 and 1930.
He changed his name to Franz Johnston in 1927, presumably because his New York astrologist said he would never find success with the name Francis or Frank. He became a founder and director an art school in Georgian Bay in Ontario between 1930 and 1940.
Over his artistic career, Johnston painted everything from pastoral scenes in the Ontario and Québec countrysides to the landscape and peoples of the Arctic. As his career developed, he moved toward a traditional form of realism, which was close to that of 19th-century painters such as Homer Watkins.
Franz Johnston was invited to Eldorado on Great Bear Lake in 1939, where he spent six months sketching both the landscape and activities of northern aboriginal peoples. After his return, he resided in Wyebridge, Ontario, transforming the village hall into a home and studio. He travelled frequently to northern Ontario to create paintings and made his last trip into the Nipigon territory in 1946. During his last summers, he depicted pastoral subjects in Quebec, Baie St. Paul, villages in the Laurentians and the Ottawa Valley.
The Shadowed Valley
Camp Borden
Serenity Lake of the Woods
What Greets the Eye When You Look Back at the Pilot
The Fire Ranger
Autumn, Algoma
Moose Pond
The Dark Woods Interior
A Northern Night
C Flight Machine Cracked on Hangar B
Fire Swept Algoma
Green Pool
Patterned Hillside
Thunderers
Rock Formation, Bon Echo
Winter Surrenders
The Onoman Forest
Mountain Spell Jasper Park
Winter Sun
Golden Days
Angler's Dream
Winter Arabesque
Lions of March
The Shadowy Glen
Summer, Kenora
Snow in the North (Ont.)
Blue Pools of Silence
A Song of Winter
Land of the Habitant
Crossfault Lake, Great Bear Lake, NWT
The Warm Light of Spring
Johnston was an energetic, ambitious and strong-willed man.
Franz Johnston was married to Florence Myrtle Jane Jamieson. The couple produced three children, Frances Arbuckle, Lauren Johnston and Paul Johnston (Roderick).