Burt Johnson

Burt William Johnson (25 April 1890—27 March 1927) was an American sculptor.

Johnson was born in Flint, Ohio. At the age of 13, he went to live for a year in Cornish, New Hampshire , where his older sister Annetta, wife of sculptor Louis St. Gaudens, was studying with Louis' brother, master sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens. Johnson moved to Claremont, California in 1907 to study at Pomona College, and then to New York City in 1909 to study at the Art Students League of New York. He worked with fellow sculptors James Earle Fraser, Robert I. Aitken and George Bridgman, as well as his brother-in-law, Louis St. Gaudens. Back in California after Louis St. Gaudens' death in 1913, he moved into the studio that his brother-in-law had created during a visit to Claremont.

Johnson remained active in both California and New York, and is well known for his statues honoring American soldiers of World War I, known as doughboys. Examples of these doughboy statues can be found in DeWitt Clinton Park and Doughboy Park in New York City, the latter being named the best war memorial of its kind by the American Federation of Artists in 1928. Garfield Park in Pomona, California has another World War I tribute created by Johnson, dedicated in 1923, with an allegorical representation of Pomona, the Goddess of Fruit, beside a young man.The Children's Tribute to the World War Heroes (1919) in Robert Keller Park in Huntington Park, California, depicts a barefoot girl holding the uniform caps of a sailor and a doughboy to her heart.

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