Frank (Franz) Hans Johnston 1888 - 1949

Johnston showed with the Group of Seven only for its first exhibition in May, 1920. He then accepted a position as the head of the School of Art in Winnipeg and never showed with them again. His later work, according to A.Y. Jackson, who may have resented Johnston's subsequent commercial success, was slick and easy.

Initially, however, Johnston's work was vigourous, insightful, inventive and compelling. He painted remarkable paintings of airplanes wheeling in the sky, perhaps among the earliest of such subjects ever painted. This painting must surely be from the 1920s, for it has all the hallmarks of Johnston at his early best. The composition is tight, richly detailed, and assertive without being overt. Johnston's sense of depth and recession was uncanny, and he makes this fine scene seem like the easiest thing in the world to render.