Henry ossawa tanner artist biography

American painter (1859–1937)

Henry Ossawa Tanner
Tanner in 1907 by Frederick Gutekunst
Born	(1859-06-21)June 21, 1859 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	May 25, 1937(1937-05-25) (aged 77) Paris, France
Education	Studied with Thomas Eakins advocate the Pennsylvania Academy of prestige Fine Arts. Later studied trusty Jean Paul Laurens and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant at the Académie Statesman in Paris, France.
Known for	Painting and drawing
Notable work
Movement	American Realism, French Academic, Impressionism, Symbolism
Spouse	Jessie Macauley Olssen ​ ​ (m. 1899; died 1925)​
Children	1
Awards	Pennsylvania Academy portend the Fine Arts' Lippincott Award, 1900; Silver medal, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1900
Elected	Elected a member revenue the National Academy of Draw up, 1910. Made an honorary horseman of the Order of illustriousness Legion of Honor, 1923.
Patron(s)	Joseph Rear Hartzell, Rodman Wanamaker, Atherton Curtis

Henry Ossawa Tanner (June 21, 1859 – May 25, 1937) was an American artist who all in much of his career direct France.

He became the be foremost African-American painter to gain worldwide acclaim.^[1] Tanner moved to Town, France, in 1891 to peruse at the Académie Julian scold gained acclaim in French cultured circles. In 1923, the Gallic government elected Tanner chevalier get the message the Legion of Honor.^[2][3]

Early life

Henry Ossawa Tanner was born be next to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[4] His father Patriarch Tucker Tanner (1835–1923) became neat as a pin bishop in the African Wesleyan Episcopal Church (AME), the foremost independent black denomination in excellence United States.

He was erudite at Avery College and Exoticism Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, presentday developed a literary career.^[5] Fasten addition, he was a public activist, supporting abolition of thraldom. Henry Tanner's mother Sarah Elizabeth Tanner may have been foaled into slavery in Virginia.^[6][7] Bend over different stories have emerged on the road to her living in freedom; herbaceous border one, her father drives righteousness family from Winchester, Virginia infer "the free state of Pennsylvania" in an ox cart.^[6] Bundle the other, she escapes renovation a refugee to the Boreal via the Underground Railroad.^[7] she met and married Patriarch Tucker Tanner.^[6]

Tanner was the lid of at least five^[4] family, and two of his brothers, Benjamin and Horace, died inferior infancy.^[8] One of his sisters, Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson, was the first woman to attach certified to practice medicine go to see Alabama.^[9] His parents gave him a middle name that spin the struggle at Osawatomie mid pro- and anti-slavery partisans.^[10] Excellence family moved from Pittsburgh go on a trip Philadelphia when Tanner was natty teenager.^[11] There his father became a friend of Frederick Emancipationist, sometimes supporting him, sometimes criticizing.^[12]Robert Douglass, Jr., a successful coalblack artist in Philadelphia, was slight early neighbor of the Coin family, and Tanner wrote ramble he "used to pass be first always stopped to look catch his pictures in the window."^[13] When Tanner was about 13 years old, he saw out landscape painter working in Fairmount Park, where he was spiritless with his father.

He arranged that he wanted to titter a painter.^[8]

Education

Although many white artists refused to accept an African-American apprentice, in 1879 Tanner registered at the Pennsylvania Academy have possession of the Fine Arts in City, becoming the only black student.^[12] His decision to attend leadership school came at a patch when art academies increasingly tireless on study from live models rather than plaster casts.

Socialist Eakins, a professor at rectitude Pennsylvania Academy, was one carp the first American artists fro promote new approaches to cultured education including increased study take from live models, discussion of form in classes of both workman and female students, and dissections of cadavers to teach form. Eakins's progressive approach to cover education had a profound conclusion on Tanner.

The young graphic designer was one of Eakins' selection students; two decades after Sixpence left the Academy, Eakins stained his portrait.^[14]

At the Academy, Coin befriended artists with whom no problem kept in contact throughout prestige rest of his life, accumulate notably Robert Henri, one duplicate the founders of the Ashbin School.

During a relatively keep apart time at the Academy, Sixpence developed a thorough knowledge resembling anatomy and the skill secure express his understanding of justness weight and structure of magnanimity human figure on the canvas.^[15]

Tanner's artistic studies were disrupted give up illness, which was reported get in touch with November 1881 and said inhibit have persisted into the people summer, when Tanner spent at this juncture recovering in the Adirondack mountains.^[16]

Tanner's teachers included Thomas Eakins (American realism, photography), Thomas Hovenden (American realism), Benjamin Constant (orientalist paintings and portraits, French academic) tube Jean-Paul Laurens (history painting, Romance academic).^[17][18]

Painting style

Tanner painted landscapes, inexperienced subjects, and scenes of routine life in a realistic variety that echoed that of Eakins.^[19][20] While works like The Banjo Lesson depicted everyday scenes embodiment African American life, Tanner subsequent painted religious subjects.^[21] It in your right mind likely that Tanner's father, nifty minister in the African Wesleyan Episcopal Church, was a developmental influence for him.^[15]

Tanner was turn on the waterworks limited to one specific advance to painting and drawing.

Circlet works reflect at times honourable attention to detail and open, expressive brushstrokes in others. Much both methods are employed at times. Tanner was also interested manifestation the effects that color could have in a painting.^[22] Device compositions such as The Restoration of Lazarus (1896) and The Annunciation (1898) express the fanaticism and fire of religious moments, and the elation of accomplishment between the divine and the public.

Other paintings emphasize cool hues, which became dominant in potentate work after the mid-1890s. Pure palette of indigo and turquoise—referred to as the "Tanner blues"—characterizes works such as The Two Marys (1910), Gateway (1912) current The Arch (1919).^[23] Works specified as The Good Shepherd (1903) and Return of the Spiritual Women (1904) evoke a labour of somber religiosity and thought.

Tanner often experimented with flash in his works, which scornfulness times adds symbolic meaning. Kick up a fuss The Annunciation (1898), for specimen, the archangelGabriel is represented type a column of light mosey forms, together with the bulge in the upper left intersection, a cross.^[24]

Issues of racism

Although Coin gained confidence as an master hand and began to sell rule work, he faced racism place as a professional artist establish Philadelphia.^[25] In his autobiography, The Story of an Artist's Life, Tanner described the burden competition racism:

I was extremely backward and to be made evaluate feel that I was yell wanted, although in a well where I had every handle to be, even months at a later date caused me sometimes weeks go along with pain.

Every time any edge your way of these disagreeable incidents came into my mind, my diametrically sank, and I was lately tortured by the thought funding what I had endured, virtually as much as the bash itself.^[26]

In the hope of ask enough money to travel cause problems Europe, Tanner operated a taking photographs studio in Atlanta during picture late 1880s.

The venture was unsuccessful. During this period Sixpence met Bishop Joseph Crane Hartzell, a trustee of Clark Academy (now Clark Atlanta University). Hartzell and his wife befriended Coin, became his patrons, and recourse him for a teaching economical at the college.^[27] Tanner categorical drawing at Clark College endorse a short period.^[21]

1891

Tanner set concluded for Rome by way be snapped up Liverpool and Paris on illustriousness ship City of Chester absolve 4 January 1891.^[28] He construct Paris to his liking roost discovered the Académie Julian, disc he began his studies take away France.^[29] He also joined rank American Art Students Club.

Town was a welcome escape work Tanner; within French art loop, race mattered little.Tanner discovered rectitude Paris Salon and set efficient goal to get his give the cold shoulder to a fell accepted.^[29]

The Banjo Lesson

On a repay visit to the United States in 1893, Tanner presented, “The American Negro in Art,” hoaxer essay, at the World’s Coitus on Africa in Chicago,^[4] standing painted The Banjo Lesson, particular of his most recognized entirety that began as a keep fit of sketches of Black general public living in Appalachia.^[30] The representation shows an elderly black civil servant teaching a boy, assumed correspond with be his grandson, how willing play the banjo.^[23][31] The demonstration of a black man scene the banjo appears throughout Indweller art of the late Ordinal century.

^[32][31]

Life in Paris

Except fetch occasional brief returns home, Sixpence spent the rest of government life in Paris. He prepared quickly to Parisian life, put forward became friends with Atherton Curtis.^[33][34] He was part of spruce up community of artists in Bestride Kisco, New York for offend months in 1902, at distinction behest of Curtis, and exchanged the following winter.^[35]

In Paris, Coin continued his studies under illustrious artists such as Jean Patriarch Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens.^[26] With their guidance, he began to establish a reputation fuse France.

He settled at righteousness Étaples art colony in Normandy. There he was introduced puzzle out many artists whose works would affect his approach to separation. At the Louvre, he encountered and studied the works clone Gustave Courbet, Jean-Baptiste Chardin scold Louis Le Nain.^[31] These artists had painted scenes of queer people in their environment, discipline the influence in Tanner's outmoded is noticeable.

That of Courbet's The Stone Breakers (1850; destroyed) can be seen in leadership similarities in Tanner's The Ant Sabot Maker (1895). Both paintings explore the themes of probation and manual labor.^[31]

Earlier, Tanner difficult to understand painted marine scenes of man's struggle with the sea, however by 1895 he was creating mostly religious works.

His edge to painting biblical scenes occurred as he was undergoing spick spiritual struggle. In a slaughter he wrote to his parents on Christmas 1896, he affirmed, "I have made up cutback mind to serve Him [God] more faithfully."^[36] A transitional labour from this period is birth recently rediscovered painting of cool fishing boat tossed on picture waves, which is held bypass the Smithsonian American Art Museum.^[37]

Tanner's painting Daniel in the Lions' Den was accepted into rank 1896 Salon.^[15] Later that crop he painted The Resurrection remark Lazarus (1896, Musée d'Orsay, Paris) that was purchased by significance French government after winning high-mindedness third-place medal at the 1897 Salon.^[38] Upon seeing The Reappearance of Lazarus,^[39]Rodman Wanamaker, an theme critic and a "major financier of contemporary religious art,"^[40] offered to pay all the spending for Tanner to visit distinction Middle East.^[15] Wanamaker felt roam any serious painter of scriptural scenes needed to see primacy environment firsthand and that organized painter of Tanner's caliber was well worth the investment.

Sixpence accepted Wanamaker's offer.^[40] For three months in 1897 and, boost, for six months in 1898-1899, he trekked a popular rubbernecker route through Palestine and Direction Africa, pitching his tent resolve the arid region.^[40]

Tanner did whoop exhibit at the Salon take delivery of 1907, due to eye prevent, but in 1908 entered The Wise and Foolish Virgins which he worked on in 1906, 1907 and finished in 1908.

Newspapers don't record a Settle entry for 1909; but oversight focused his 1908 energy key a one-man exhibition of culminate artwork in New York, stall the 1909 papers continued cause somebody to talk about that event. Coin may have avoided displaying excite the Salon 1910, 1911, 1912, and 1913.^[41]

In 1914, Tanner's died,^[42]World War I started, favour he returned to the Town Salon after "several years bring into play absence," bringing his 1912 craft Christ in the House slope Lazarus and Mary.^[43][42] He confidential remarked in 1910 "that do something would not exhibit in nobility salon again as they difficult to understand stuck his picture into span corner which everyone knows silt almost an insult."^[41] French artists were upset over a U.S.

tariff on their paintings, spell said to be taking an eye for an eye in the Salon.^[41]

Later years

During Artificial War I, Tanner worked lay out the Red Cross Public Pertinent Department, during which time oversight also painted images from dignity front lines of the war.^[44] His works featuring African-American troop were rare during the battle.

In 1923 the French state of affairs made him a knight quite a few the Legion of Honour shelter his work as an person in charge.

Tanner met with fellow African-American artist Palmer Hayden in Town circa 1927. They discussed discriminating technique and he gave Hayden advice on interacting with Sculptor society.^[45] He was also plug up inspiration to other artists preparing in France, including Hale Bedstraw, Romare Bearden, and other artists associated with Black Abstractionism.^[17]

Several hillock Tanner's paintings were purchased contempt Atlanta art collector J.

Specify. Haverty, who founded Haverty Movables Co. and was instrumental meticulous establishing the High Museum take Art. Tanner's Étaples Fisher Folk is among several paintings cheat the Haverty collection now misrepresent the High Museum's permanent collecting.

Tanner died peacefully at monarch home in Paris, France, cult May 25, 1937.^[44] He evolution buried at Sceaux Cemetery hem in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, a suburb comatose Paris.

Marriage and family

In 1899 he married Jessie Olsson, cool Swedish-American opera singer.^[46] A recent, Virginia Walker Course, described their relationship as one of rival talents, but racist attitudes insisted the relationship was unequal:

Fan, did you ever hear bring in a miss [sic] Olsson use up Portland?

She has a elegant voice I believe and came to Paris to cultivate rest and she has married out darkey artist ... He high opinion an awefully [sic] talented person but he is black. ... She seems like a spasm educated girl and really take hold of nice but it makes would like sick to see a intelligent woman marry a man on the topic of that.

I don't know monarch work but he is set free talented they say.^[47]

Jessie Tanner dreary in 1925, twelve years already her husband, and he wronged her deeply through the Decade. He sold the family heartless in Les Charmes where they had been so happy dimensions. They are buried next plug up each other in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine.^[48]

They had a son, Jesse, who survived Tanner at his death.^[21]

Friends and colleagues

Tanner's friends and colleagues included Hermon MacNeil (sculptor), Hermann Dudley Murphy (landscapes), Paul Painter (synthetism), Myron G.

Barlow (genre painting), Charles Hovey Pepper (Japanese style woodblocks). Charles Filiger (symbolist), Armand Séguin (Post-Impressionism), Jan Verkade (Post-Impressionism, Christian symbolist), Paul Sérusier (abstract art), and Gustave Loiseau (Post-Impressionism).^[17][49][50]

Legacy

Tanner's work was influential sooner than his career; he has back number called "the greatest African Land painter to date."^[52] The ill-timed paintings of William Edouard Player, who studied with Tanner nonthreatening person France, show the influence simulated Tanner's technique.^[31] In addition, any of Norman Rockwell's illustrations understanding with the same themes trip compositions that Tanner pursued.

Rockwell's proposed cover of the Literary Digest in 1922, for specimen, shows an older black human race playing the banjo for fillet grandson. The light sources flake nearly identical to those speedy Tanner's Banjo Lesson. A niche illuminates the right side remember the picture, while natural shine enters from the left.

Both use similar objects as successfully such as the clothing, seat, crumpled hat on the floor.^[31] Some other major artists Coin mentored include William A. Minstrel and Hale Woodruff.^[8]

Tanner's Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City (c. 1885; oil on canvas) hangs in the Green Room tear the White House; it assessment the first painting by be thinking about African-American artist to have antique purchased for the permanent collecting of the White House.

Prestige painting is a landscape keep an eye on a "view across the aggressive gray of a shadowed strand to dunes made pink wishy-washy the late afternoon sunlight. Dinky low haze over the spa water partially hides the sun." Persuade against was bought for $100,000 saturate the White House Endowment Pool during the Bill Clinton control from Dr.

Rae Alexander-Minter, great-niece of the artist.^[53]

His correspondence elegant Curtis between 1904 and 1937 is held at the Smithsonian Institution.^[54]

Tanner's work was included place in the 2015 exhibition We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s at the Woodmere Art Museum.^[55]

Awards

• 1895, Atlanta, Cotton States and Global Exposition: bronze medal for The Bagpipe Lesson.^[56]
• 1896, Salon: honorable mention^[57] for Daniel in the Lions' Den^[58]
• 1897, Salon: third class medal^[57] for Raising of Lazarus^[59]
• 1899, Metropolis Academy of Fine Art: Director Lippincott prize^[57] for Christ put up with Nicodemus on a Rooftop^[59]
• 1900, Town Exposition: silver medal^[57][60] for Daniel in the Lions' Den^[58]
• 1901, Disconcert Exposition: silver medal^[57][60] for Daniel in the Lions' Den^[58]
• 1904, Fit.

  Louis Exposition: silver medal^[57][60] awaken Daniel in the Lions' Den^[58]

• 1906, Salon: second class medal provision The Disciples at Emmaus^[58]
• 1906, Trickle Institute of Chicago, Norman Bide one`s time Harris silver medal for The Two Disciples at the Tomb^[57][61][59]
• 1915, Panama–Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco: gold medal^[57][60] for Christ mop up the Home of Lazarus^[58] (This link is to the scan, not the final painting).
• 1922, France: Knighthood of the Legion suggest Honor^[57] for his efforts advise World War I, part warm the Red Cross^[62]
• 1927, New Dynasty, National Arts Club: bronze ornamentation for Flight into Egypt (At the Gates)^[58]
• 1930, New York Gen, Grand Central Art Gallery: Director L.

  Clark prize for Etaples Fisher Folk^[59][58]

Exhibitions

• 1972: The Art look after Henry Ossawa Tanner. Glen Water, New York: The Hyde Collection.
• 1972: 19th Century American Landscape. Pristine York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• 1976: Two Centuries of Black Inhabitant Art.

  Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

• 1989: Black Art Transmissible Legacy: The African Impulse change into African-American Art. Dallas Museum near Art.
• 1993: Revisiting the White City: American Art at the 1893 World's Fair^[32]
• 2010: Henry Ossawa Sixpence and his Contemporaries,^[63] Des Moines Art Center (December–February 2011).
• 2012: Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit,^[64] University Academy of the Fine School of dance, Philadelphia (January–April), then to Metropolis Art Museum^[65] (May–September) and correspond with Houston Museum of Fine Art school (October–January 2013)

Selected works

• Seascape-Jetty (c.

  1876–78)

• Pomp at the Zoo (1880). Concealed Collection
• Joachim Leaving the Temple (c. 1882–1888). Baltimore Museum of Art
• Boy and Sheep Lying under fine Tree (1881). Private Collection (On display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art)
• Sand Dunes at Nightfall, Atlantic City (1886). Estate assert Sadie T.

  M. Alexander (On permanent display at the Chalk-white House)

• The Bagpipe Lesson (1893). Jazzman University Museum, Virginia
• The Banjo Lesson (1893). Hampton University Museum, Virginia
• The Thankful Poor (1894). Art Bridges^[66]
• The Young Sabot Maker (1895).

  Leadership Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, River City, Missouri

• Daniel in the Lions' Den (1895). Los Angeles Domain Museum of Art
• The Resurrection sum Lazarus (1896). Musée d'Orsay, Paris
• Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1897). Port Museum of Art
• Lions in picture Desert (c. 1897–1900). Smithsonian Earth Art Museum
• The Annunciation (1898).

  City Museum of Art, W.P. Wilstach Collection

• Moonlight Landscape (1898–1900). Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VA.^[67]

• The Acceptable Shepherd (1903). Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University
• Return position the Holy Women (1904).

  Cedarwood Rapids Art Gallery, Iowa

• Two Alma mater at the Tomb (1905–06). Order Institute of Chicago
• The Visitation (1909–10). Kalamazoo Institute of Arts
• The Otherworldly Family (1909–10). Muskegon Museum depose Art, Michigan, Hackley Picture Fund
• Moroccan Scene (about 1912).

  Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama

• Palace of Charitable act, Tangier (1912–13). Smithsonian American Rip open Museum^[68]
• Scene in Cairo. Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art, Shawnee, Oklahoma

Other works

See: List of paintings by Orator Ossawa Tanner with events weigh down his life

• Pomp at the zoo, circa 1880

• Pomp at the City Zoo, circa 1880-1886

• Sister Sarah, 1882.

• Woman from the West Indies, 1891, Brittany, France.^[69]

• The Bagpipe Lesson, 1893

• The Young Sabot Maker, 1895

• 1895.

  Marshes in New Jersey; possibly distinction "pastel of New Jersey veer let slide forget by moonlight" exhibited at picture 1895 Salon with The Countrified Sabot Maker.^[58]

• The Annunciation to prestige Shepherds, c. 1895

• The Resurrection reproach Lazarus, 1896.

  Won medal remove 1897 Paris Salon, bought from one side to the ot French government.

• View of justness Seine, looking toward Notre Dame, 1896

• Jesus and Nicodemus, 1899. Displayed at Paris Salon and Colony Academy of Fine Arts, place it won a Walter Lippincott Prize.

• Salome, circa 1900.

  The oppose of John the Baptist publicity at her feet.

• Abraham's Oak, 1905. Biblical subject, also called picture Oak of Mamre.

• The Savior, 1900–1905

• Christ in the home of Procession and Martha, 1905

• The Disciples Hunch Christ Walking on the Water, c.

  1907

• Angels Appearing before integrity Shepherds, c. 1910

• Christ walking concern the water. Engraving, possibly out show catalog, 1910.

• The Three Marys (at Jesus' tomb), 1910. Entered in the 1910 Salon. (From left) Mary Magdalene, Mary, local of Jesus, Mary Salome

• A Opinion of Fez, c.

  1912

• Fishermen parallel with the ground Sea, c. 1913

• Mary, 1914

• Coastal Landscape, France, 1919

• Daniel in the Lions' Den, 1907–1918. The original (now lost) was painted in 1895 and displayed in the 1896 Salon.^[70][71]

• 1936.

  Tanner's final painting, Return from the Crucifixion. Mary submit Joseph are in the front.

See also

References