Tom Loftin Johnson (artist)

Tom Loftin Johnson
Tom Loftin Johnson in 1938
Born	1905 Denver, Colorado United States
Died	unknown
Nationality	American
Education	École des Beaux-Arts Yale School of Art
Occupation	Artist, Educator
Employer	West Point
Known for	Panorama of Military History at West Point American Pieta at the Carnegie Museum of Art Murals at Fort Niagara State Park
Title	Major

Major Tom Loftin Johnson (born 1905; death date unknown) was an American painter and an art teacher at West Point. He created public murals – the largest of which was 70 feet (21 m) 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.

Tom Loftin Johnson was born in Denver, Colorado in 1905. He was trained at the Yale School of Art, where he illustrated campus humor magazine The Yale Record. After Yale, he trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

It is said that Johnson requested that his remains be placed with a plaque on the 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.

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 (21 m) 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.