Tom Loftin Johnson

Major Tom Loftin Johnson (October 5, 1900 – June 25, 1963) was an American painter and an art teacher at West Point. He created public murals – the largest of which was long. His American Pietà painting, which won $1,000 in the 1941 Carnegie International contest, was intended to highlight the race problem in the United States. A Pietà is meant to show the Virgin Mary holding the crucified Jesus. In Johnson's American Pietà, the black mother holds her lynched son whilst others hide his tortured body.

Biography Tom Loftin Johnson was born in Denver, Colorado, in October 1900. After Yale, he trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Johnson married Sophie Connett in 1928; he died in June 1963 in New York City. It is said that Johnson requested that his remains be placed with a plaque on his West Point mural with the inscription: "He gave his best to West Point". To date, this has not been done, even when the mural was restored in 2006.

Works

Johnson is known for the government-funded murals he created during the Depression. Panorama of Military History, at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, is probably his best-known work, covering the south wall, with Edward Shepherd Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. This is the largest American mural using egg tempera. The 70-foot-long mural required the yolks of 35 dozen fresh eggs mixed with oil to make the paint. Johnson was paid $30 a week and his assistant $20. Johnson chose the 20 globally most important battles including those that featured Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and Hannibal.