Henry Ossawa Tanner

Henry Ossawa Tanner (June 21, 1859 – May 25, 1937) was an American artist who spent much of his career in France. He became the first African-American painter to gain international acclaim. Tanner moved to Paris, France, in 1891 to study at the Académie Julian and gained acclaim in French artistic circles. In 1923, the French government elected Tanner chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

Early life

Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In addition, he was a political activist, supporting abolition of slavery. Henry Tanner's mother Sarah Elizabeth Tanner may have been born into slavery in Virginia. Two different stories have emerged concerning her living in freedom; in one, her father drives the family from Winchester, Virginia to "the free state of Pennsylvania" in an ox cart. One of his sisters, Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson, was the first woman to be certified to practice medicine in Alabama. His parents gave him a middle name that commemorated the struggle at Osawatomie between pro- and anti-slavery partisans.

The family moved from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia when Tanner was a teenager. There his father became a friend of Frederick Douglass, sometimes supporting him, sometimes criticizing. Robert Douglass, Jr., a successful black artist in Philadelphia, was an early neighbor of the Tanner family, and Tanner wrote that he "used to pass and always stopped to look at his pictures in the window." When Tanner was about 13 years old, he saw a landscape painter working in Fairmount Park, where he was walking with his father. He decided that he wanted to be a painter.

At the Academy, Tanner befriended artists with whom he kept in contact throughout the rest of his life, most notably Robert Henri, one of the founders of the Ashcan School. During a relatively short time at the Academy, Tanner developed a thorough knowledge of anatomy and the skill to express his understanding of the weight and structure of the human figure on the canvas.

Tanner's artistic studies were disrupted by illness, which was reported in November 1881 and said to have persisted into the following summer, when Tanner spent time recovering in the Adirondack Mountains.

Tanner's teachers included Thomas Eakins (American realism, photography), Thomas Hovenden (American realism), Benjamin Constant (orientalist paintings and portraits, French academic) and Jean-Paul Laurens (history painting, French academic).

Painting style

thumb|left|[[The Annunciation (Tanner)|The Annunciation, 1898, Philadelphia Museum of Art]]

Tanner painted landscapes, religious subjects, and scenes of daily life in a realistic style that echoed that of Eakins. While works like The Banjo Lesson depicted everyday scenes of African American life, Tanner later painted religious subjects. Warmer compositions such as The Resurrection of Lazarus (1896) and The Annunciation (1898) express the intensity and fire of religious moments, and the elation of transcendence between the divine and humanity. Other paintings emphasize cool hues, which became dominant in his work after the mid-1890s. A palette of indigo and turquoise—referred to as the "Tanner blues"—characterizes works such as The Three Marys (1910), Gateway (1912) and The Arch (1919). Works such as The Good Shepherd (1903) and Return of the Holy Women (1904) evoke a feeling of somber religiosity and introspection.

Tanner often experimented with light in his works, which at times adds symbolic meaning. In The Annunciation (1898), for example, the archangel Gabriel is represented as a column of light that forms, together with the shelf in the upper left corner, a cross.

Issues of racism

Although Tanner gained confidence as an artist and began to sell his work, he faced racism working as a professional artist in Philadelphia. In his autobiography, The Story of an Artist's Life, Tanner described the burden of racism:

<blockquote>I was extremely timid and to be made to feel that I was not wanted, although in a place where I had every right to be, even months afterwards caused me sometimes weeks of pain. Every time any one of these disagreeable incidents came into my mind, my heart sank, and I was anew tortured by the thought of what I had endured, almost as much as the incident itself. Tanner taught drawing at Clark College for a short period.

1891

Tanner set out for Rome by way of Liverpool and Paris on the ship City of Chester on 4 January 1891. He found Paris to his liking and discovered the Académie Julian, where he began his studies in France. He also joined the American Art Students Club. Paris was a welcome escape for Tanner; within French art circles, race mattered little. Tanner discovered the Paris Salon and set a goal to get his artwork accepted. and painted The Banjo Lesson, one of his most recognized works that began as a series of sketches of Black people living in Appalachia. The painting shows an elderly black man teaching a boy, assumed to be his grandson, how to play the banjo. He was part of a community of artists in Mount Kisco, New York for six months in 1902, at the behest of Curtis, and returned the following winter.

thumb|left|Atherton Curtis with his wife, by Tanner.

In Paris, Tanner continued his studies under renowned artists such as Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. With their guidance, he began to establish a reputation in France. He settled at the Étaples art colony in Normandy. There he was introduced to many artists whose works would affect his approach to art. At the Louvre, he encountered and studied the works of Gustave Courbet, Jean-Baptiste Chardin and Louis Le Nain. These artists had painted scenes of ordinary people in their environment, and the influence in Tanner's work is noticeable. That of Courbet's The Stone Breakers (1850; destroyed) can be seen in the similarities in Tanner's The Young Sabot Maker (1895). Both paintings explore the themes of apprenticeship and manual labor. A transitional work from this period is the recently rediscovered painting of a fishing boat tossed on the waves, which is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Tanner's painting Daniel in the Lions' Den was accepted into the 1896 Salon. Upon seeing The Resurrection of Lazarus, Rodman Wanamaker, an art critic and a "major patron of contemporary religious art," For four months in 1897 and, again, for six months in 1898-1899, he trekked a popular tourist route through Palestine and North Africa, pitching his tent in the arid region. World War I started, and he returned to the Paris Salon after "several years of absence," bringing his 1912 painting Christ in the House of Lazarus and Mary. French artists were upset over a U.S. tariff on their paintings, and said to be taking revenge in the Salon. His works featuring African-American troops were rare during the war. In 1923 the French state made him a knight of the Legion of Honour for his work as an artist.

Tanner met with fellow African-American artist Palmer Hayden in Paris circa 1927. They discussed artistic technique and he gave Hayden advice on interacting with French society. He was also an inspiration to other artists studying in France, including Hale Woodruff, Romare Bearden, and other artists associated with Black Abstractionism. A contemporary, Virginia Walker Course, described their relationship as one of equal talents, but racist attitudes insisted the relationship was unequal:

<blockquote>Fan, did you ever hear of a miss [sic] Olsson of Portland? She has a beautiful voice I believe and came to Paris to cultivate it and she has married a darkey artist ... He is an awefully [sic] talented man but he is black. ... She seems like a well educated girl and really very nice but it makes me sick to see a cultivated woman marry a man like that. I don't know his work but he is very talented they say.</blockquote>

Jessie Tanner died in 1925, twelve years before her husband, and he grieved her deeply through the 1920s. He sold the family home in Les Charmes where they had been so happy together. They are buried next to each other in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine.

They had a son, Jesse, who survived Tanner at his death.

Legacy

thumb|Tanner's The Seine (c. 1902), one of three paintings by African Americans on display in 2012 in the [[National Gallery of Art's American Art galleries.]]

Tanner's work was influential during his career; he has been called "the greatest African American painter to date." The early paintings of William Edouard Scott, who studied with Tanner in France, show the influence of Tanner's technique.

His correspondence with Curtis between 1904 and 1937 is held at the Smithsonian Institution.

Tanner's work was included in the 2015 exhibition We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s at the Woodmere Art Museum.

Awards

thumb|Photo of Tanner's lost painting, Daniel in the Lion's Den, 1896.

1895, Atlanta, Cotton States and International Exposition: bronze medal for The Bagpipe Lesson.
1896, Salon: honorable mention for Daniel in the Lions' Den
1897, Salon: third class medal
1899, Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art: Walter Lippincott prize for Christ at the Home of Lazarus
1927, New York, National Arts Club: bronze medal for Flight into Egypt (At the Gates) Des Moines Art Center (December–February 2011).
2012: Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia (January–April), then to Cincinnati Art Museum (May–September) and to Houston Museum of Fine Arts (October–January 2013)

Selected works

thumb|upright=1.5|Tanner's studio

Seascape-Jetty (c. 1876–78)
Pomp at the Zoo (1880). Private Collection
Joachim Leaving the Temple (c. 1882–1888). Baltimore Museum of Art
Boy and Sheep Lying under a Tree (1881). Private Collection (On display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art)
Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City (1886). Estate of Sadie T. M. Alexander (On permanent display at the White House)
The Bagpipe Lesson (1893). Hampton University Museum, Virginia
The Banjo Lesson (1893). Hampton University Museum, Virginia
The Thankful Poor (1894). Art Bridges
The Young Sabot Maker (1895). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Daniel in the Lions' Den (1895). Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Resurrection of Lazarus (1896). Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1897). Baltimore Museum of Art
Lions in the Desert (c. 1897–1900). Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Annunciation (1898). Philadelphia Museum of Art, W.P. Wilstach Collection
Moonlight Landscape (1898–1900). Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VA.
thumb|Portrait of Tanner by [[V. Floyd Campbell]]The Good Shepherd (1903). Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University
Return of the Holy Women (1904). Cedar Rapids Art Gallery, Iowa
Two Disciples at the Tomb (1905–06). Art Institute of Chicago
The Visitation (1909–10). Kalamazoo Institute of Arts
The Holy Family (1909–10). Muskegon Museum of Art, Michigan, Hackley Picture Fund
Moroccan Scene (about 1912). Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama
Palace of Justice, Tangier (1912–13). Smithsonian American Art Museum
Scene in Cairo. Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art, Shawnee, Oklahoma

Other works

File:Pomp at the zoo, by Henry ossawa tanner.jpg|Pomp at the zoo, circa 1880

File:Pomp at the Philadelphia Zoo.jpg|Pomp at the Philadelphia Zoo, circa 1880-1886

File:Sister Sarah, by Henry Ossawa Tanner.jpg|Sister Sarah, 1882.

File:Woman from the West Indies, by Henry Ossawa Tanner.webp|Woman from the West Indies, 1891, Brittany, France.

Henry Ossawa Tanner - The Bagpipe Lesson.jpg|The Bagpipe Lesson, 1893

File:Henry Ossawa Tanner - The Young Sabot Maker - Google Art Project.jpg|The Young Sabot Maker, 1895

File:Marshes in New Jersey, by Henry Ossawa Tanner. SAAM-1984.149.3 1.jpg|1895. Marshes in New Jersey; possibly the "pastel of New Jersey coast by moonlight" exhibited at the 1895 Salon with The Young Sabot Maker.

File:Return from the Crucifixion, by Henry Ossawa Tanner.jpg|1936. Tanner's final painting, Return from the Crucifixion. Mary and Joseph are in the front.

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File:Henry Ossawa Tanner - Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City - Google Art Project.jpg|Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City, c. 1885, the White House.

File:Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1929-30, High Museum of Art.jpg|Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, 1929–30, High Museum of Art

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References

External links

White House Biography
Springfield Museum of Art Biography
Ebony Society of Philatelic Events and Reflections Biography
Muskegon Museum of Art
Profile at PBS.org
Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit (University of California Press, 2012)—the most complete scholarly publication to date produced in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA), Tanner's alma mater
Biographical sketch and gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

; Art online

Moroccan Scene at the Birmingham Museum of Art

Archives of American Art

Henry Ossawa Tanner Papers
Alexander family papers relating to Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1912–1985
Gallery of images and letters from the PAFA archives
Henry Ossawa Tanner papers, 1860s–1978, bulk 1890–1937. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.