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Who was William H. Johnson?

By Robert "Rob" Redding  Jr.

Publisher

July 30, 2007, 12:01 a.m. - William Henry Johnson was a struggling Depression-era realist/impressionist painter born in Florence, S.C. in 1901.

Little is known about his reportedly white father, who had only one child with his black mother Alice.
Alice, who cleaned the homes of white families, would later marry, making Johnson the oldest of her five children. Johnson took care of his younger siblings, while copying drawings from the comics in the local newspaper.

He eventually left his racially divided hometown at age 17 to look for work in Harlem.

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Once in New York, he became a student at the National Academy of Art. In 1926, he traveled to Paris, where he picked up his Van Gogh-like style, but found little success. 

Four years later, he briefly returned to his hometown, finding it unchanged. He was arrested for loitering while painting "The Jacobia Hotel," a local brothel.

Once freed from jail, he traveled back to Denmark, where he married Danish artist, Holcha Krake.

In 1938, Johnson and his wife moved to New York, where he still found little success. His wife died of breast cancer in 1943, just as his fame began. Johnson briefly returned to Florence and then to Europe. Once there, he fell ill, was returned to the United States in 1947 and sent to a mental institution in New York. He spent his final 23 years locked away, never painting again until his death in 1970.

The Smithsonian now controls more than 1,000 of his paintings, which are said to be worth millions.

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