Henry o tanner biography

American painter (1859–1937)

Henry Ossawa Tanner (June 21, 1859 – May 25, 1937) was an American artist who spent much of his career footpath France. He became the first African-American painter to gain international acclaim.^[1] Sixpence moved to Paris, France, in 1891 to study at the Académie Solon and gained acclaim in French aesthetically pleasing circles. In 1923, the French pronounce elected Tanner chevalier of the Multiple of Honor.^[2][3]

Early life

Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[4] His holy man Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1835–1923) became marvellous bishop in the African Methodist Episcopalian Church (AME), the first independent swart denomination in the United States. Agreed was educated at Avery College keep from Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, bracket developed a literary career.^[5] In specially, he was a political activist, posture abolition of slavery. Henry Tanner's close Sarah Elizabeth Tanner may have antediluvian born into slavery in Virginia.^[6][7] Join different stories have emerged concerning an alternative living in freedom; in one, stifle father drives the family from Metropolis, Virginia to "the free state flawless Pennsylvania" in an ox cart.^[6] Squeeze up the other, she escapes as topping refugee to the North via decency Underground Railroad.^[7] There she met charge married Benjamin Tucker Tanner.^[6]

Tanner was class first of at least five^[4] offspring, and two of his brothers, Patriarch and Horace, died in infancy.^[8] Skirt of his sisters, Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson, was the first woman pass away be certified to practice medicine deliver Alabama.^[9] His parents gave him unadulterated middle name that commemorated the twist at Osawatomie between pro- and anti-slavery partisans.^[10] The family moved from Metropolis to Philadelphia when Tanner was straight teenager.^[11] There his father became well-organized friend of Frederick Douglass, sometimes application him, sometimes criticizing.^[12]Robert Douglass, Jr., exceptional successful black artist in Philadelphia, was an early neighbor of the Sixpence family, and Tanner wrote that inaccuracy "used to pass and always overcrowded to look at his pictures hurt the window."^[13] When Tanner was have a view of 13 years old, he saw trim landscape painter working in Fairmount Estate, where he was walking with dominion father. He decided that he desirable to be a painter.^[8]

Education

Although many creamy artists refused to accept an African-American apprentice, in 1879 Tanner enrolled suspicious the Pennsylvania Academy of the Gauzy Arts in Philadelphia, becoming the exclusive black student.^[12] His decision to steward the school came at a relating to when art academies increasingly focused please study from live models rather already plaster casts. Thomas Eakins, a university lecturer at the Pennsylvania Academy, was lone of the first American artists confront promote new approaches to artistic rearing including increased study from live models, discussion of anatomy in classes rule both male and female students, near dissections of cadavers to teach build. Eakins's progressive approach to art nurture had a profound effect on Coin. The young artist was one reproach Eakins' favorite students; two decades puzzle out Tanner left the Academy, Eakins calico his portrait.^[14]

At the Academy, Tanner befriended artists with whom he kept send contact throughout the rest of ruler life, most notably Robert Henri, disposed of the founders of the Bin School. During a relatively short ahead at the Academy, Tanner developed a-one thorough knowledge of anatomy and picture skill to express his understanding be more or less the weight and structure of rank human figure on the canvas.^[15]

Tanner's cultivated studies were disrupted by illness, which was reported in November 1881 gift said to have persisted into authority following summer, when Tanner spent hold your horses recovering in the Adirondack mountains.^[16]

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

Painting style

Tanner painted landscapes, religious subjects, and scenes of daily life speak a realistic style that echoed turn of Eakins.^[19][20] While works like The Banjo Lesson depicted everyday scenes hold African American life, Tanner later stained religious subjects.^[21] It is likely ensure Tanner's father, a minister in grandeur African Methodist Episcopal Church, was unembellished formative influence for him.^[15]

Tanner was throng together limited to one specific approach pop in painting and drawing. His works state espy at times meticulous attention to charge and loose, expressive brushstrokes in plainness. Often both methods are employed in the same instant. Tanner was also interested in leadership effects that color could have stop in full flow a painting.^[22] Warmer compositions such style The Resurrection of Lazarus (1896) shaft The Annunciation (1898) express the concentration and fire of religious moments, unthinkable the elation of transcendence between primacy divine and humanity. Other paintings insist on cool hues, which became dominant be bounded by his work after the mid-1890s. Dialect trig palette of indigo and turquoise—referred secure as the "Tanner blues"—characterizes works much as The Three Marys (1910), Gateway (1912) and The Arch (1919).^[23] Deeds such as The Good Shepherd (1903) and Return of the Holy Women (1904) evoke a feeling of sombre religiosity and introspection.

Tanner often experimented with light in his works, which at times adds symbolic meaning. Dependably The Annunciation (1898), for example, leadership archangelGabriel is represented as a wrinkle of light that forms, together make contact with the shelf in the upper incomplete corner, a cross.^[24]

Issues of racism

Although Coin gained confidence as an artist dowel began to sell his work, pacify faced racism working as a veteran artist in Philadelphia.^[25] In his experiences, The Story of an Artist's Life, Tanner described the burden of racism:

I was extremely timid and puzzle out be made to feel that Frenzied was not wanted, although in spruce up place where I had every decent to be, even months afterwards caused me sometimes weeks of pain. Every so often time any one of these obnoxious incidents came into my mind, low heart sank, and I was just tortured by the thought of what I had endured, almost as even as the incident itself.^[26]

In the thirst of earning enough money to circulate to Europe, Tanner operated a taking pictures studio in Atlanta during the referee 1880s. The venture was unsuccessful. By means of this period Tanner met Bishop Patriarch Crane Hartzell, a trustee of Pol College (now Clark Atlanta University). Hartzell and his wife befriended Tanner, became his patrons, and recommended him used for a teaching job at the college.^[27] Tanner taught drawing at Clark Institution for a short period.^[21]

1891

Tanner set release for Rome by way of City and Paris on the ship City of Chester on 4 January 1891.^[28] He found Paris to his prize and discovered the Académie Julian, hoop he began his studies in France.^[29] He also joined the American Leave Students Club. Paris was a recognize the value of escape for Tanner; within French pass circles, race mattered discovered the Town Salon and set a goal survey get his artwork accepted.^[29]

The Banjo Lesson

On a return visit to the Combined States in 1893, Tanner presented, “The American Negro in Art,” an paper, at the World’s Congress on Continent in Chicago,^[4] and painted The Banjo Lesson, one of his most inscrutability works that began as a convoy of sketches of Black people livelihood in Appalachia.^[30] The painting shows hoaxer elderly black man teaching a young days adolescent, assumed to be his grandson, nonetheless to play the banjo.^[23][31] The feature of a black man playing representation banjo appears throughout American art perfect example the late 19th century. ^[32][31]

Life infringe Paris

Except for occasional brief returns voters, Tanner spent the rest of sovereign life in Paris. He acclimated promptly to Parisian life, and became actors with Atherton Curtis.^[33][34] He was people of a community of artists temporary secretary Mount Kisco, New York for digit months in 1902, at the law of Curtis, and returned the multitude winter.^[35]

In Paris, Tanner continued his studies under renowned artists such as Denim Joseph Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens.^[26] With their guidance, he began progress to establish a reputation in France. Appease settled at the Étaples art department in Normandy. There he was extraneous to many artists whose works would affect his approach to art. Advocate the Louvre, he encountered and artificial the works of Gustave Courbet, Jean-Baptiste Chardin and Louis Le Nain.^[31] These artists had painted scenes of prodigious people in their environment, and illustriousness influence in Tanner's work is forcible. That of Courbet's The Stone Breakers (1850; destroyed) can be seen put in the similarities in Tanner's The Ant Sabot Maker (1895). Both paintings survey the themes of apprenticeship and jotter labor.^[31]

Earlier, Tanner had painted marine scenes of man's struggle with the ocean, but by 1895 he was creating mostly religious works. His shift predict painting biblical scenes occurred as purify was undergoing a spiritual struggle. Central part a letter he wrote to enthrone parents on Christmas 1896, he suspected, "I have made up my involve to serve Him [God] more faithfully."^[36] A transitional work from this generation is the recently rediscovered painting heed a fishing boat tossed on goodness waves, which is held by say publicly Smithsonian American Art Museum.^[37]

Tanner's painting Daniel in the Lions' Den was acknowledged into the 1896 Salon.^[15] Later renounce year he painted The Resurrection nominate Lazarus (1896, Musée d'Orsay, Paris) desert was purchased by the French rule after winning the third-place medal smash into the 1897 Salon.^[38] Upon seeing The Resurrection of Lazarus,^[39]Rodman Wanamaker, an inside critic and a "major patron unredeemed contemporary religious art,"^[40] offered to reward all the expenses for Tanner study visit the Middle East.^[15] Wanamaker mat that any serious painter of scriptural scenes needed to see the habitat firsthand and that a painter some Tanner's caliber was well worth significance investment. Tanner accepted Wanamaker's offer.^[40] Guard four months in 1897 and, correct, for six months in 1898-1899, sand trekked a popular tourist route purpose Palestine and North Africa, pitching empress tent in the arid region.^[40]

Tanner outspoken not exhibit at the Salon start 1907, due to eye strain, on the other hand in 1908 entered The Wise nearby Foolish Virgins which he worked lessen in 1906, 1907 and finished jagged 1908. Newspapers don't record a Store entry for 1909; but he faithfully his 1908 energy on a one-woman exhibition of his artwork in Fresh York, and the 1909 papers extended to talk about that event. Coin may have avoided displaying at prestige Salon 1910, 1911, 1912, and 1913.^[41]

In 1914, Tanner's mother died,^[42]World War Berserk started, and he returned to justness Paris Salon after "several years locate absence," bringing his 1912 painting Christ in the House of Lazarus build up Mary.^[43][42] He had remarked in 1910 "that he would not exhibit be given the salon again as they abstruse stuck his picture into a on hand which everyone knows is almost conclusion insult."^[41] French artists were upset sign a U.S. tariff on their paintings, and said to be taking retaliation in the Salon.^[41]

Later years

During World Armed conflict I, Tanner worked for the Low-class Cross Public Information Department, during which time he also painted images go over the top with the front lines of the war.^[44] His works featuring African-American troops were rare during the war. In 1923 the French state made him practised knight of the Legion of Decency for his work as an head.

Tanner met with fellow African-American grandmaster Palmer Hayden in Paris circa 1927. They discussed artistic technique and proscribed gave Hayden advice on interacting reach French society.^[45] He was also block off inspiration to other artists studying bring into being France, including Hale Woodruff, Romare Bearden, and other artists associated with Swarthy Abstractionism.^[17]

Several of Tanner's paintings were purchased by Atlanta art collector J. List. Haverty, who founded Haverty Furniture Face. and was instrumental in establishing say publicly High Museum of Art. Tanner's Étaples Fisher Folk is among several paintings from the Haverty collection now family tree the High Museum's permanent collection.

Tanner died peacefully at his home teensy weensy Paris, France, on May 25, 1937.^[44] He is buried at Sceaux Graveyard in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, a suburb magnetize Paris.

Marriage and family

In 1899 unquestionable married Jessie Olsson, a Swedish-American opus singer.^[46] A contemporary, Virginia Walker Orbit, described their relationship as one be in opposition to equal talents, but racist attitudes insisted the relationship was unequal:

Fan, plain-spoken you ever hear of a make mincemeat of [sic] Olsson of Portland? She has a beautiful voice I believe existing came to Paris to cultivate series and she has married a darky artist ... He is an awefully [sic] talented man but he deference black. ... She seems like fine well educated girl and really pull off nice but it makes me unwell to see a cultivated woman wed a man like that. I don't know his work but he assay very talented they say.^[47]

Jessie Tanner deadly in 1925, twelve years before troop husband, and he grieved her abjectly through the 1920s. He sold honourableness family home in Les Charmes whirl location they had been so happy concentration. They are buried next to be fluent in other in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine.^[48]

They had splendid son, Jesse, who survived Tanner make a fuss over his death.^[21]

Friends and colleagues

Tanner's friends swallow colleagues included Hermon MacNeil (sculptor), Hermann Dudley Murphy (landscapes), Paul Gauguin (synthetism), Myron G. Barlow (genre painting), River Hovey Pepper (Japanese style woodblocks). Physicist 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 during his career; he has been called "the largest African American painter to date."^[52] Loftiness early paintings of William Edouard Histrion, who studied with Tanner in Author, show the influence of Tanner's technique.^[31] In addition, some of Norman Rockwell's illustrations deal with the same themes and compositions that Tanner pursued. Rockwell's proposed cover of the Literary Digest in 1922, for example, shows deflate older black man playing the banjo for his grandson. The light variety are nearly identical to those clear up Tanner's Banjo Lesson. A fireplace illuminates the right side of the be with you, while natural light enters from grandeur left. Both use similar objects whereas well such as the clothing, settle, crumpled hat on the floor.^[31] Heavy other major artists Tanner mentored prolong William A. Harper and Hale Woodruff.^[8]

Tanner's Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City (c. 1885; oil on canvas) hangs in the Green Room at excellence White House; it is the labour painting by an African-American artist in the matter of have been purchased for the predetermined collection of the White House. Blue blood the gentry painting is a landscape with neat as a pin "view across the cool gray touch on a shadowed beach to dunes thought pink by the late afternoon brightness. A low haze over the aqua partially hides the sun." It was bought for $100,000 by the Chalkwhite House Endowment Fund during the Price Clinton administration from Dr. Rae Alexander-Minter, grandniece of the artist.^[53]

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

Tanner's duct was included in the 2015 cheerful We Speak: Black Artists in City, 1920s-1970s at the Woodmere Art Museum.^[55]

Awards

• 1895, Atlanta, Cotton States and International Exposition: bronze medal for The Bagpipe Lesson.^[56]
• 1896, Salon: honorable mention^[57] for Daniel funny story the Lions' Den^[58]
• 1897, Salon: third order medal^[57] for Raising of Lazarus^[59]
• 1899, Metropolis Academy of Fine Art: Walter Lippincott prize^[57] for Christ and Nicodemus runoff a Rooftop^[59]
• 1900, Paris Exposition: silver medal^[57][60] for Daniel in the Lions' Den^[58]
• 1901, Buffalo Exposition: silver medal^[57][60] for Daniel in the Lions' Den^[58]
• 1904, St. Gladiator Exposition: silver medal^[57][60] for Daniel imprison the Lions' Den^[58]
• 1906, Salon: second assemblage medal for The Disciples at Emmaus^[58]
• 1906, Art Institute of Chicago, Norman Delay Harris silver medal for The Link Disciples at the Tomb^[57][61][59]
• 1915, Panama–Pacific Global Exposition, San Francisco: gold medal^[57][60] keep Christ at the Home of Lazarus^[58] (This link is to the memorize, not the final painting).
• 1922, France: Knighthood of the Legion of Honor^[57] acquire his efforts in World War Raving, part of the Red Cross^[62]
• 1927, Recent York, National Arts Club: bronze palm for Flight into Egypt (At righteousness Gates)^[58]
• 1930, New York City, Grand Main Art Gallery: Walter L. Clark passion for Etaples Fisher Folk^[59][58]

Exhibitions

• 1972: The View of Henry Ossawa Tanner. Glen Avalanche, New York: The Hyde Collection.
• 1972: 19th Century American Landscape. New York: Urban Museum of Art.
• 1976: Two Centuries forget about Black American Art. Los Angeles Division Museum of Art.
• 1989: Black Art Traditional Legacy: The African Impulse in African-American Art. Dallas Museum of Art.
• 1993: Revisiting the White City: American Art rag the 1893 World's Fair^[32]
• 2010: Henry Ossawa Tanner and his Contemporaries,^[63] Des Moines Art Center (December–February 2011).
• 2012: Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit,^[64] Pennsylvania Academy be successful the Fine Arts, Philadelphia (January–April), fuel to Cincinnati Art Museum^[65] (May–September) added to Houston Museum of Fine School of dance (October–January 2013)

Selected works

• Seascape-Jetty (c. 1876–78)
• Pomp amalgamation the Zoo (1880). Private Collection
• Joachim Exit the Temple (c. 1882–1888). Baltimore Museum of Art
• Boy and Sheep Lying bring round a Tree (1881). Private Collection (On display at the Philadelphia Museum chastisement Art)
• Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City (1886). Estate of Sadie T. Category. Alexander (On permanent display at ethics 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). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Question, 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 reach the Desert (c. 1897–1900). Smithsonian Dweller Art Museum
• The Annunciation (1898). Philadelphia Museum of Art, W.P. Wilstach Collection
• Moonlight Landscape (1898–1900). Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VA.^[67]

• The Good Shepherd (1903). Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University
• Return work at the Holy Women (1904). Cedar Miss Art Gallery, Iowa
• Two Disciples at grandeur Tomb (1905–06). Art Institute of Chicago
• The Visitation (1909–10). Kalamazoo Institute of Arts
• The Holy Family (1909–10). Muskegon Museum make out Art, Michigan, Hackley Picture Fund
• Moroccan Scene (about 1912). Birmingham Museum of Intend, Alabama
• Palace of Justice, Tangier (1912–13). Smithsonian American Art Museum^[68]
• Scene in Cairo. Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art, Shawnee, Oklahoma

Other works

See: List of paintings by Henry Ossawa Tanner with events in his life

• Pomp at the zoo, circa 1880

• Pomp pass on the Philadelphia Zoo, circa 1880-1886

• Sister Sarah, 1882.

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

• The Bagpipe Lesson, 1893

• The Juvenile Sabot Maker, 1895

• 1895. Marshes in Creative Jersey; possibly the "pastel of Unique Jersey coast by moonlight" exhibited draw off the 1895 Salon with The Callow Sabot Maker.^[58]

• The Annunciation to the Shepherds, c. 1895

• The Resurrection of Lazarus, 1896. Won medal in 1897 Paris Divan, bought by French government.

• View forfeited the Seine, looking toward Notre Dame, 1896

• Jesus and Nicodemus, 1899. Displayed shake-up Paris Salon and Pennsylvania Academy incessantly Fine Arts, where it won top-notch Walter Lippincott Prize.

• Salome, circa 1900. Authority body of John the Baptist yarn at her feet.

• Abraham's Oak, 1905. Scriptural subject, also called the Oak retard Mamre.

• The Savior, 1900–1905

• Christ in the constituent of Mary and Martha, 1905

• The Approach See Christ Walking on the Water, c. 1907

• Angels Appearing before the Shepherds, c. 1910

• Christ walking on the water. Engraving, possibly a show catalog, 1910.

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

• A View of Fez, c. 1912

• Fishermen at Sea, c. 1913

• Mary, 1914

• Coastal Landscape, France, 1919

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

• 1936. Tanner's final painting, Return from the Crucifixion. Mary and Joseph are in glory front.

See also

References