Michener Art Museum

Clarence R. Johnson

PAINTER
BORN: September 11, 1894, Maxtown, Ohio
DIED: July 6, 1981, Saluda, Polk County, North Carolina

In 1912 Clarence Johnson came to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to study painting with Daniel Garber, and their mutual interest and talent soon turned into a great friendship, both becoming painters of the New Hope School of Impressionism. Upon his return from service in WWI and study in France on a Cresson Scholarship, he made his home in Lumberville, where an artist's colony was well-established, and he received substantial recognition there. He had been exhibiting at the Academy since 1917, and his most widely acclaimed painting, Lumberville Lock, was first shown there in 1923. The piece went on to be shown at the Carnegie Institute, the National Academy of Design, and the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving several prestigious awards. His one man show at Dudensing Gallery in New York in 1924 received rave reviews from the New York papers. In the manner of artists of his day, Johnson exhibited his works in large juried salons regularly through the mid 1930s. Johnson stopped painting around 1938, refusing to allow the sale of his work during his lifetime. After his death in 1981, the entire body of his work, which had not been exhibited for nearly 50 years, was shown at the Janet Fleisher Gallery in Philadelphia.