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Tanner, Henry Ossawa
American painter who was called “the first genius among Negro artists” by art historian James A. Porter.The son of a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was named after Osawatomie, the site of John Brown's antislavery raid in Kansas. Tanner began painting at the age of thirteen, and beginning in 1880 was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied with Thomas Eakins, among others. Tanner taught at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1889 to 1891, when he relocated to Paris, largely to escape racial prejudice in America. In Paris, Tanner took courses at the Académie Julien and, with the exception of two brief visits home in 1893 and 1896, continued to live and paint there until his death in 1937.While at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and through 1890, Tanner painted traditional European subjects such as landscapes and animals. In the 1890s, however, Tanner began painting genre scenes of African American life, including his well-known work, The Banjo Lesson (1893), and The Thankful Poor (1894). He is best known, though, for his painting of biblical subjects that he began in the mid-1890s. From 1894 to 1914, Tanner regularly exhibited his work at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français in Paris, and after 1900 he also exhibited widely in the United States as well.Tanner's work is grounded in the techniques of romantic realism and impressionism. His somber rendering of scenes from the Old and New Testaments won awards at the Paris Salon in 1896 and 1897. The Raising of Lazarus (1896) was purchased by the French government, which named Tanner a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in 1923.See also Art, African American; Tanner, Benjamin.
Bibliography
- Matthews, Marcia M. Henry Ossawa Tanner, American Artist. University of Chicago Press, 1969.
- Mosby, Dewey F., Darrell Sewell, and Rae Alexander-Minter. Henry Ossawa Tanner. Rizzoli International Publications, 1991.
