Clarence Raymond Johnson (1894-1981), from Pennsylvania, painted the rural landscape with an Impressionist style and subjects focused on nature. He often selected a high vantage point for his paintings, with foreground clusters of trees and houses below, leading to extensive vistas of distant hills and sky.

His color is rich with unexpected combinations of relatively high-key, atmospheric pastel shades. His forms have a rounded solidity (with just a subtle hint of Cezanne) and are more characteristic of American painting than the French Impressionist landscape painting of Monet and Renoir.

Johnson studied at the Columbus, Ohio School of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy with Emil Carlson, and Cecilia Beaux, and in Paris. He exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy , the National Academy, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He lived in Lumberville and Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.

Source:
Peter Falk, "Who Was Who in American Art"
Mantle Fielding, "Dictionary of American Painters"

Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton