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Henry Ossawa Tanner

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937)was the son of Rev. Benjamin Tucker Tanner, Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Born in Pittsburgh and raised in Philadelphia, he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts under Thomas Easkins. As an African-American artist, Tanner found it difficult to establish patronage in Philadelphia or in Atlanta, where he initially opened a photography studio. During a trip to the North Carolina mountains, his paintings of local black residents impressed Bishop Joseph Hartzel, who became the first of Tanner's several white benefactors. Hartzel purchased Tanner's entire exhibition, enabling the artist to travel abroad. He studied for several years at the Academie Julian in Paris, where his work became more personal and sensitive. Around 1896, Tanner began to focus on religious subjects, a change that brought critical and financial success. His overwhelming acceptance at the Paris Salon brought with it awards and honors and the support of affluent French patrons. Following a trip to the Holy Land, Tanner's style changed dramatically, developing into a mature blend of spirituality and impressionistic color, light, and form. Although his work was earning increasing notice in America, Tanner decided to make Paris his permanent home after his marriage in 1898 to a white woman from California. Tanner was the first black artist elected to the National Academy and was made a Knight of France's Legion of Honor. His painting "The Raising of Lazarus" was purchased by the French government for the Luxembourg Museum. Today his works are found in many museums in Europe and America, including the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, the Metropolitan Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles Museum of Art.

Biography courtesy of Roger King Gallery of Fine Art, www.antiquesandfineart.com/rking

America's first internationally renowned African-American artist, Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in Pittsburgh to a well-educated and devoutly religious family. When Henry was age 13, his father, the Reverend Benjamin Tucker Tanner, moved the family to Philadelphia. With the support of his parents and inspiration from the art of the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition, he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy to study with Thomas Eakins who became a close friend.

Tanner briefly painted animals and was determined to become the "American Landseer" in response to the demand for animal portraits. Between 1886 and 1887 Tanner was an illustrator for Harper Brothers, a publishing firm willing to advance black artists and writers. He then moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he briefly and unsuccessfully ran a photography studio, but by 1891 he turned back to painting and sailed for France.

In Paris he studied at the Julian Academy with Benjamin Constant and J.P. Laurens. He received many honors and was considered a 'strong man' at Julian's before his first Salon picture. He traveled to celebrated locations as Pont-Aven, but remained relatively unswayed by contemporary art movements. Tanner discovered the Salons and their power to advance a painter's career, both abroad and in America. The acceptance of his painting, The Banjo Lesson by the 1894 Salon marked both a "turning point in his career and a shift in emphasis in his choice of subject, for it was his first major exploration of the pathos of the black in society."

He returned briefly to Philadelphia but decided Paris was his natural home. At first, he was highly successful with genre painting but switched to religious subjects in the mid-1890's and traveled extensively in the Near East to absorb Biblical references.

In 1899, Tanner married Jessie Macauley Olssen, a white Californian, and decided to make France his home for the remainder of his life. He feared that Americans would not be accepting of an interracial marriage. In 1908, he wrote of France, "There is a breadth, a generosity, an obsolete cosmopolitanism about her recognition of the fine arts, which bars no nationality, no race, no school, or variation of artistic method."

Sources:
Antiques Magazine
Peter Falk, Who Was Who in American Art

Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton

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