Artist Henry Ossawa Tanner
African-American Painter of The Banjo Lesson and Biblical Scenes
© Meg Nola
Jan 6, 2009
Tanner was born on June 21, 1859, to Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Sarah Miller, a former slave who had escaped on the Underground Railroad. Henry’s middle name Ossawa was adapted from Osawatomie, the Kansas town where abolitionist John Brown began his crusade. The Tanners moved to Philadelphia when Henry was nine, and it was the sight of a painter at work outdoors in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park that sparked young Henry’s interest in becoming an artist.
Eakins and Europe
Tanner initially began learning independently, sketching animals at the zoo and landscapes until he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. One of Tanner’s most influential instructors was Thomas Eakins, well-known for his own artwork and intense teaching methods. The earnest and diffident Tanner would become one of Eakins’ favorite pupils. However, despite the fact that Tanner was of mixed race and could claim both black and white heritage, he encountered prejudice from some of his white fellow students and often beyond the easel in the everyday world.
Following his Pennsylvania Academy education, Tanner tried to establish himself in various ventures yet then opted to go abroad in 1891. While it was difficult to leave his family, friends, and own country behind, Tanner felt that Europe had fewer color barriers and would be a better place to build a career.
In Paris, Tanner studied at the Académie Julian. He was forced to return home for a short time due to a serious case of typhoid, and while recuperating in Philadelphia produced one of his best known African-American genre paintings, The Banjo Lesson. Tanner wanted to portray African-Americans as valid individuals and not stereotypes, and during this visit Tanner also gave a presentation entitled “The American Negro in Art” at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Despite all this, Tanner soon headed back to Paris, hoping to escape the racial strife found in America.
Biblical Scenes
Tanner’s 1896 entry in the Paris Salon — Daniel in the Lion’s Den — earned an Honorable Mention. Tanner had decided to move away from modernism and use classical biblical scenes, and his subsequent Raising of Lazarus painting was purchased by the French government for its museum collection. This was a major coup for an American and helped to assure Tanner that he was on the right path.
Trips to Egypt and Palestine would further Tanner’s Orientalist religious style, with his first major American prize won for Nicodemus. Around this time, Tanner began to show a shift from realism to more fluid, beautifully muted tones and shapes.
Marriage and Later Years
In 1899, Tanner married Jessie Maccauley Olssen, who had posed for the figure of Mary in Tanner’s The Annunciation and who would model for other paintings in the years to come. Jessie was white, and with the prevailing intolerance toward mixed marriages in the United States, the couple felt it best to remain in France. Their son Jesse was born in 1903.
As Tanner’s career progressed and he earned various honors, it became clearer how this man who so disliked confrontation had instead used a quiet inner power to make his way. He took other trips to Algiers and Morocco, and with the coming of World War I offered his services to the American Red Cross. Tanner recreated scenes of army life and combat, and at the war’s end was given the French Cross of the Legion of Honor for his artistic and otherwise efforts.
Tanner was deeply affected by the death of his wife in 1925. He resumed working, however, and throughout his years in France opened his studio and home to aspiring African-American artists. While the younger generation might have had more avant-garde attitudes, they still found Tanner’s success, skill, and resolve to move beyond racism greatly inspiring.
Tanner’s last completed painting was Return from the Crucifixion, finished in 1936. He died in Paris in May of 1937, leaving behind many notable works, an autobiography entitled The Story of an Artist’s Life, and an international reputation. Tanner’s paintings can be seen at numerous American museums and at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
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