Henry Ossawa Tanner: Spirit in Color and Light

On September 22, 1862 President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed to the peoples of a

war-torn and divided country that after “the first day of January [1863] all persons held as

slaves within any State… in rebellion against the United States, shall be then,

thenceforward, and forever free.”1 He then called upon the power of the executive

government to “recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons,” and “do no act or

acts to repress such persons… in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”2 With

this statement and the subsequent legislation passed, President Lincoln abolished slavery

in the United States. The Civil War would continue until May 9, 1865, just weeks after the

elected leader of the not-quite re-United States was murdered on a quiet April evening in

Ford’s Theater.

The postbellum United States was less than ideal for the people of color living

there—the Emancipation Proclamation, though a historic step in the direction of “Liberty

and Justice for All,” did little to abolish the bilateral racial divide existent in the United

States. Historian Tyler Stovall, in his book, Paris Noir, examined the intricate influences and

backstories of black Americans in Parisian society. Stovall explained that the United States

was gripped by a “virulent white racism,” with people of color experiencing “grinding

poverty at the bottom of American Society.”3 Black southern men, though recognized as

citizens under federal law, were not allowed to vote by white society, especially in towns

where the Ku Klux Klan (not coincidentally, founded in 1865) ran rampant. The same

1 Abraham Lincoln, “The Emancipation Proclamation,” January 1, 1863, National Archives and Records
Administration, archives.gov, Accessed March 19, 2016.
2 Ibid.
3 Tyler Edward Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 2.
 Reese 2

country which had long stole the lives and freedom of countless men and women, and only

to proclaim their emancipation generations later, was still largely devoted to segregation.

Bound by strict social codes, formerly enslaved people were kept impoverished. Those

Black artists, authors and performers subject to the extensive institutionalized racism of

this period were forced to either give up their creative aspirations or relocate outside the

United States for the career and social opportunities offered to them in Europe—especially

in the bustling arts center of Paris.

Henry Ossawa Tanner was one of these expatriates. Tanner was a painter and

innovator who, though classically trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the

Acadѐmie Julian in Paris, embraced Impressionist, tonalist, and symbolist tendencies over

the course of his career—tendencies which emerge most notably in his portfolio of

religious painting. The amalgamation of stylistic influences resulted from highly personal

interest in the spiritual subjects he depicted.

Tanner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on June 21, 1859, to Benjamin Tucker

Tanner, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, and Sarah Elizabeth

Tanner [nѐe Miller], an educator and emancipated slave.4 The artist’s mother was born into

slavery in Virginia in May 1840, the daughter of a white plantation owner and a Black

woman who was “presumably his slave.”5 The Miller family, freed soon after Sarah’s birth,

were some of the few to legally escape the South in the antebellum period, able to attain

4 Dewey F. Mosby, Across Continents and Cultures: The Art and Life of Henry Ossawa Tanner. (Kansas City, Mo: Nelson-
Atkins Museum of Art, 1995), 10.
5 Judith Wilson, "Lifting ‘the Veil’: Henry O. Tanner's The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful

Poor," Contributions in Black Studies: Vol. 9, Article 4 (1992), 33.

 Reese 3

their freedom with the help of abolitionists and Underground Railroad volunteers.6 Like

others leaving the South, the Miller family settled down in a major city in the North—in this

case, Pittsburgh—and started a life.

Sarah Miller met and eventually married, Benjamin Tanner, a third-generation

freedman who worked extensively for both the church and the abolition of slavery. By all

accounts, the two were active in their community. By the time of Lincoln’s Emancipation

Proclamation in 1862, the Tanner family was well-respected: Benjamin, a recognized AME

Church elder, was promoted to deacon, and Sarah Elizabeth was a mother to the still-

toddling Henry Ossawa.

The family would increase in size over the years. The children were well-educated

and the family enjoyed relative financial stability, “automatically” making them “member[s]

of the Black elite, a group that—especially after Emancipation—must have felt tremendous

pressure to fill various psychic and social leadership roles.”7 The Tanners raised their

children with high expectations and much vigor, instilling in them values such as education,

deep religiosity, dignity, racial pride, and good citizenship, in order to prepare them for the

racially and socially stratified society of antebellum Pennsylvania. The oldest Tanner child,

in part because of the stability and personal resolve his parent’s household afforded him,

would grow up to become one of the most talented and multi-faceted artists of the late 19th

and early 20th centuries.

6 Kelly J. Baker, Henry Ossawa Tanner: Race, Religion, and Visual Mysticism, (Florida State University and ProQuest, 2008)
12.
7 Wilson, “Lifting ‘the Veil,’” 33.
 Reese 4

The Tanner family, because of the legacy of Benjamin Tanner’s free lineage, his

involvement in the church, and the accessibility to education, was of what E. Franklin

Frazier first termed the “Black Bourgeoisie.” 8 This was a social class made up of affluent

Black Americans who were more economically stable and though of African-American

descent, also typically of lighter skin tone. The existence of this class, because of its more

stable economic status, commonly challenged the binary racial system of “white vs. Black”

instituted and sustained by members of the white community. White society credited their

social and economic position to biology instead of enforced circumstance to keep power

and uphold the status quo. Similarly, because of their lightened skin tone, the Tanner family

and other men and women with mixed ancestry fell under a racial classification of

“mulatto;” this classification system is a classic example of hypodescent, which was created

in part to mitigate any threat posed the heavily segregated system. “Mulattos,” could

experience ostracism from both communities, as any person of both ancestries experienced

firsthand the existence of a line between “every man who has one drop of African blood in

his veins, and every other class in the community”—Frederickson refers to this as the “one

drop rule.” 9

In Albert Boime’s 1993 article, “Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” the

author argues that, through careful examination of Tanner’s experiences with racism, “it is

possible to interpret the stylistic shifts in his genre painting at the turn of the century as a

condition of his constant negotiation of the social terms of his racial identity.”10 Boime goes

8 E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1957); quoted in Albert Boime, “Henry Ossawa Tanner’s
Subversion of Genre,” Art Bulletin vol. 75 (Sep. 1993), 415.
9 G.M. Frederickson, The Black Image in the White Mind (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 17; quoted in Boime, “Henry

Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” 415.

10 Albert Boime, “Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” Art Bulletin, vol. 75 (Sep. 1993), 415.
 Reese 5

on to say that “the difficulties in trying to determine racial identity and the contradictions

of institutionalized racism are exemplified in the development of his career.”11 Simply put,

the constant trials of racism for an emerging artist such as Tanner spurred a stylistic

transformation from Black genre painting to religious painting, as the latter offered a more

covert way of addressing the dynamics of freedom and oppression.

Henry Ossawa Tanner had some very specific wishes pertaining to the tendency

toward the amalgamation of his talents and his race. According to scholar Dewey Mosby,

“Tanner made it clear that he wished to be identified ethnically as Black, but not to be

judged solely on that account.”12 Oftentimes, Tanner was reviewed in the American press

first and foremost in regard to his skin color, his work secondarily. Over time this constant

critical judgement created in the artist “an antipathy to racial classification.” 13 This

phenomenon occurred because, in the United States of the day, his immense talent had to

be rationalized in the racially-stratified post-war system. The recognition of Tanner’s great

artistic abilities as inherent to his ‘mulatto’-ness and by extension his white lineage

preserved the racial status quo at the degradation of the artist’s identity and personal

success. Attributing his talent to perseverance, talent, and intelligence threatened the white

power structure because it would force recognition of these traits in other Black men and

women.

The public’s interest in his skin tone was frustrating and bewildering for a man who

devoted his life to his work and wanted it acknowledged on the basis of talent rather than

11 Ibid.
12 Mosby, Across Continents, 9
13 Ibid.
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race.14 Tanner was not afraid to speak out against this practice, such as in the case of

Eunice Tietjens, a Chicago art critic reviewing the work of American artists in Paris. In 1914

she wrote “But [Tanner] is not an Anglo-Saxon. His work is in essence oriental, it is

subjective, almost mystical.”15 Though praising the “livableness” of his work and richly

saturated color, Tietjens went on to say “the cold end of the spectrum, the violets, blues and

cold greens, belong naturally to the Anglo-Saxon.”16 This review operates on two levels;

first, there is an assumption that it is acceptable to psychologically associate the artist, and

by extension his painted works, with the other, the “exotic”—this is precisely the sort of

racially-based response that the artist found disparaging.17 Secondly, Tietjen’s review

exposes a possible political motive behind Tanner’s choice of color: the use of blue and

green tonalities in protest of racializing the work of Black artist.

In response to Tietjens Tanner asserted that though his racial identity was a

fundamental part of his experience as a man and an artist. He explained his belief that

“Negro blood counts and counts to my advantage—though it has caused me at times a life

of great humiliation and sorrow[. But] that it is the source of all my talents… I do not

believe, any more than I believe it all comes from my English ancestors.”18 In his letter,

Tanner also implied some amount of regret at having to leave the country of his birth: “still

deep down in my heart I love it and am sometimes sad that I cannot live where my heart

14 Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West. “Henry Ossawa Tanner,” The African-American Century: How Black Americans Have
Shaped Our Country (New York: Free Press, 2000), 23.
15 Eunice Tietjens, “H.O. Tanner,” 1914, Henry Ossawa Tanner Papers, 1850-1978, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian

Institute, Washington DC, Box 2, Folder 7.

16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 “H. O. Tanner to Mrs. Eunice Tietjens,” 25 May 1914, Henry Ossawa Tanner Papers, 1850-1978, Archives of American Art,

Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, Roll D308, Frame 119; quoted in Bruce, A Spiritual Biography, 21.
 Reese 7

is.”19 The majority of the artist’s offense to Tietjens’ review stemmed from the implication

of race, black or white, as a factor which somehow mediated or distorted his talents,

especially to the exclusion of many years of study and practice to perfect his work.

Henry Ossawa Tanner began to teach himself to paint as a youth, experimenting

with both seascapes and animal painting as an adolescent.20 Early on the artist experienced

difficulties in finding a mentor to extend his skill--eventually he was accepted into formal

art training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) under both Thomas

Hovenden, the genre painter, and Thomas Eakins, a faculty member who would become the

director of the school and a patron of Tanner’s work.21 He would attended the school on

and off from 1879 to 1885, due to both chronic illness and extensive harassment.22

Tanner’s admittance to the school as one of its first Black students was owed in part

to Eakins—it was his insistence on enrolling students from marginalized groups that

allowed Tanner’s education at the school. The inclusion of these otherwise overlooked

groups, paired with Eakins’ teaching methods, made the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art

one of “the most liberal and advanced in the world.”23 Though Eakins’ work as an American

realist painter specializing in portraiture and modern nudes is not thematically similar to

the work of Henry Tanner, both artists use similar color palettes, and the skills which

perpetuated and evolved Tanner’s early work were built at the Academy under Eakins’s

19 Ibid.
20 Mosby, Across Continents, 11.
21 Ibid., 11-12.
22 Marcus Bruce, and Henry Ossawa Tanner, Henry Ossawa Tanner: A Spiritual Biography (New York: Crossroad Pub. Co,

2002), 11.
23 Weinberg, H. Barbara, “Thomas Eakins and the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” adapted from

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 52, no. 3 (Winter 1994–1995), 28.
 Reese 8

guidance.24 Tanner’s early genre paintings, The Banjo Lesson, 1893 (Figure 1) and The

Thankful Poor, 1894 (Figure 2), for example, show a thorough and accurate rendering of

anatomical details resulting from Eakins’ teachings, which emphasized painting one’s

surroundings and working from live models, as opposed to studying source material

predominantly from classical works. Though Eakins advocated the study of nudes, full-

body nudes are exceedingly rare in Tanner’s painted works and larger repertoire.25

It was also in this time at the PAFA that the artist was familiarized with the great

masters, especially Rembrandt, who Tanner described as “the true portrayer of man.”26

Tanner, who fluctuated between genre and religious painting like Rembrandt, also

famously explored the use of painted light in ways very similar to the Dutch Master.

Anthony Zielonka wrote in his Renaissance Quarterly article “Eugène Fromentin and

Rembrandt's Painterly Language of Light,” of Rembrandt’s “use of light and shadow as a

means of expressing human emotions and the experience and sensation of life itself.”27 This

fits well with Tanner’s later art which expresses an intimate connection to both human and

Biblical experiences and offers a link to spirituality through the use of color and light.

Further, Zielonka writes of Rembrandt’s personality having “two distinct sides… the

documentary and the realist urges, on the one hand, and the ambition to express the

invisible, the incorporeal, and the ideal dimensions of life on the other.”28 Tanner, too, had

24 A testament to Henry Ossawa Tanner’s relationship with Thomas Eakins is Eakins’s work, A Portrait of Henry O. Tanner,
painted ca. 1897. This work, painted 12 years after Tanner’s time at PAFA, is representative of Tanner as one of only a
handful of students featured in portraiture by Eakins.
25 The exception to this being Study of a Young Man, undated, and The Study for Androcles, painted around the year 1886.

Neither of these works show genitalia, an indication of perhaps Tanner’s conservative upbringing.
26 Woodruff, Hale, “My Meeting with Henry O. Tanner,” Crisis (January 1970), 9, quoted in Mosby, Across Continents, 19.
27 Anthony Zielonka, “Eugène Fromentin and Rembrandt’s Painterly Language of Light,” Renaissance Quarterly Vol. 55,

Article 3 (2008), 233.

28 Ibid, 236.
 Reese 9

distinct “personalities,” at times wanting to document the everyday Black experience, but

also to express his exaltation of the faith which had carried him through his life.

After completing his education, Tanner began creating genre paintings, focusing on

the daily life of the Black working class. He created in these works an image of Black men

which was noble, but not dramatized or fetishized, and poignant for its emotional presence.

This representation was “hardly square with conventional American ideas” of Black

identity and achievement.29 Tanner’s genre paintings were created using Black models,

which was revolutionary in a period where literature and art combined character with

caricature. As Judith Wilson explains it:

The canvas was the site of a profound psychic break-through—a declaration of

African-American self-esteem that anticipated the twin emphasis on racial pride and
vernacular culture which would come to characterize the work of a number of Black
artists in the 20th Century.30
The incredible innovation of these early paintings makes it nearly impossible for scholars

to critically interpret his work without some reference to the influence race had on his

psyche and career.

Race affected Tanner many complicated ways. The extreme bias against which he

worked early on in his career may have prompted the artist to collect funds to visit the

masterworks of France and Italy in 1891 (a trip made permanent in 1904, after a short

sojourn in the United States to recover from illness).31 If racism provoked this relocation,

Tanner’s friends and neighbors made the trip possible. Much of the funding for the visit

29 W.E.B. Du Bois, "The American Negro at Paris" American Monthly Review of Reviews Vol. 22, Article 5 (November 1900),
577.
30 Judith Wilson. "Lifting ‘the Veil,’” 1.
31 Gates and West, The African-American Century, 25.
 Reese 10

came from the purchase of Tanner’s entire collection by Bishops Benjamin Payne and

Joseph Hartzell of the Cincinnati AME Church.32 It was the community support which gave

Tanner the opportunities which would have been otherwise very difficult, if not impossible

to achieve. Further prompting his relocation to Europe were the social implications of

Tanner’s relationship with Jessie Olssen, a white opera singer from California. The two

married in 1899, an interracial union not recognized as legal in the United States.33

Despite the pressures of inequality and the expectations of his social status, Tanner

produced aesthetically and technically pleasing works with a distinctive spiritual quality

over the course of his career. His enrollment in the Acadѐmie Julian between 1891 and

1893 exposed him to new sources and contemporaries such as Jean Joseph Benjamin

Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens.34 Tanner quickly evolved to blend his academic training

with the avant-garde styles of the post-Impressionists, Symbolists and Nabis he

encountered; later, he even dabbled with elements of early abstraction. His use of

distinctive, layered blends of blue and green tones in his work has come to be known as

“Tanner’s Blues,” a vibrant but calming combination which may relate to the artist’s

religious beliefs.35 His art, like that of many artists throughout time and geography, was

directly influenced by his life and experiences. This includes his upbringing in the African

Methodist Episcopal Church and early experiences with both deep-seeded religiousness

32 Ibid, 24-25. Though Tanner originally intended to visit Paris for a short period and then tour the museums of Rome, the
artist fell in love with the city of light and decided to stay.
33 Alexia Hudson, “Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia,”

Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, Vol. 79, No. 2 (Spring 2012): 242.
34 Bruce, A Spiritual Biography, 26.
35 Gates and West, The African-American Century, 25.
 Reese 11

and deeply-ingrained societal racism, both of which greatly influenced his worldview and

by extension his painted works.

Though Henry Ossawa Tanner amassed public recognition from Black society in the

United States and across France, where the artist resided after 1891, this deeply religious,

well-educated, and talented individual was made all but obscure in the pantheon of

American artists up until the last two decades or so. Tanner exhibited art in the United

States early in his career, but received significantly more recognition for his talents while

residing in France. His accolades include an honorable mention at the Paris Salon in 1896

and a gold medal in the Salon in 1900. His work was exhibited several times in the Salon

system, and was eventually made exempt from the jurying process in 1906. Tanner

received an associate Academician status in 1908 (the first artist elected to do so) and was

eventually made a full Academician in 1930.36 Further, he was rewarded with the purchase

of two of his paintings by the French government, and received the Cross of the Legion of

Honor medal in 1923. His American honors are somewhat less numerous during his

lifetime, but included the Lippincott prize from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts,

won in 1900, and the inclusion of one of his paintings in the White House permanent

collection under the Clinton administration. Several retrospectives on Henry Ossawa

Tanner have also been exhibited nationally in the past 25 years, increasing the artist’s

notoriety amongst the general public.37

The notable lack of an American legacy during and after Tanner’s extensive career

acts as a case study for both the consequences of racism in the postbellum period, and for a

36 Ibid.
37 Bruce, A Spiritual Biography, 22.
 Reese 12

fundamental misunderstanding of the artist. Tanner’s place in history is typically

associated with the invention of Black genre painting, though he did not create numerous

works under this heading. Often his career in religious painting, including some of the most

celebrated works of his career, is overlooked. This struggle in the reception of Tanner’s

work in the United States resulted from an inability to separate a member of the “Black

Bourgeoisie” from the ideals of violently-white society. Even today there exists an inability

to separate the social and political implications of Tanner’s Black genre paintings from the

more personal religious works. Though these works are obviously visually comparable

coming from the same artists, they differ greatly in subject matter. Further, there are far-

reaching and important implications associated with each which run the risk of being

mitigated when merged.

After settling in Paris, Jessie Olssen and Henry Tanner had their first and only child

in 1903, Jesse Ossawa Tanner. Both mother and child served as models for many of the

artist’s paintings, including Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures, 1910.38 What

Mosby describes as a distaste for the topic of race, Jesse Tanner clarifies as a weariness

relating primarily to his father’s personality. Henry Tanner, as described by his son, was

“shy and reticent… he could not fight prejudice and paint.” 39 The act of painting for Tanner,

whether he was creating religious imagery or typified genre works, was a deeply-moving

and mentally-exhaustive experience. Though the artist may have wished to distance himself

from some of the implications of Blackness in the late 19th century (when race relations

could be described as tense at the very best), art historian Jennifer J. Harper argues that

38 Photographs from the Smithsonian Museum’s Archives of American Art show the two modeling for the work.
39 Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 21.
 Reese 13

Tanner’s experiences pervaded nearly all of his works and decisions as an artist,

consciously or unconsciously. According to Harper, even his religious works are

fundamentally tied to Black hardship, persecution and perseverance.40 This can best be

read in Tanner’s Daniel in the Lion’s Den, 1895, which was his “first work based overtly on

religious themes, but with a story which was significant to African-Americans.”41

Harper also describes Tanner as “generally conservative and always meticulous,”

and argues that “it was Tanner’s greatest desire to invest his works with his own personal

statements about life and faith.”42 Though Tanner is still known more for revolutionizing

Black genre painting, he also created landscapes, portraits and exceptional religious works,

the lattermost being the focus of his career after 1895. He considered the pursuit of

representing his own faith and the “reverence and elevation [those] subjects impart” to be

of paramount importance.43

The Methodist faith was a foundational part of the artist’s identity and upbringing,

both as the son of an elected bishop, and himself as a man who worked closely alongside

the AME church for a number of years—faith acted as a guiding force for both father and

son. The church gave both a way of relating to a country with deep-seeded racism on both

institutional and social levels. Religion gave reason to suffering and lent a sense of

community to the Tanners, allowing them a haven in a city which scorned them for the

superficiality of skin. Further, church activities put him in direct contact with the effect

40 Jennifer Harper, “The Early Religious Paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner: A Study of Influences of Church, Family and
Era,” American Art vol. 6, no. 4 (Autumn 1992).
41 Gates and West, The African-American Century, 25-26.
42 Harper, “Early Religious Paintings,” 84.
43 Unknown author, “Tanner Exhibits Paintings,” New York Times, Jan 24, 1924. Quoted in Boime, Albert, “Subversion of

Genre,” 439.
 Reese 14

religious narratives had on the community, giving, as Tanner biographer Marcus Bruce

phrases it, “an authentic quality and intimacy to his representations of biblical scenes and

figures.”44 Tanner refers to this spiritual authenticity as well, calling it a “human touch,

which makes the whole world kin.”45 One of the most enduring and endearing themes in

Tanner’s works is his unshakeable regard for the human spirit.

Beyond this noted authenticity, a prevailing trait of Tanner’s religious paintings is

his characteristic use of blue and green tones, which can border on monochromatic. The

Disciples See Christ Walking on Water, ca. 1907 (Figure 3), is an excellent example of this

monochromatic use of color, in this instance blue. This painting is 51 ½ by 42 inches, set

vertically to enhance the rectilinear shape. A high horizon line is almost imperceptible in

the hazy scene, as the blue of the water bleeds into the blue of the sky—this creates an

ethereal, almost dreamlike quality. The work is done in variations of blue, offset by the use

of white and toned-down yellows and greens to illuminate the areas where the light

emanating from both Christ and the sun hits, and darker tones of blue to establish the wood

of the boat and areas of shadow. This is a prime example of the previously stated “Tanner’s

Blues.” The only demarcation between water and sky is the boat, which sits atop and is

reflected in the water.

There are eight figures in the work. Seven either sit or stand in two groupings in the

small fishing boat, and one, lost in a ellipse of light reminiscent of a mandala, walks on the

water in the top left corner of the painting. Behind this figure is a rising sun, which casts its

own light so that the ghost-like figure is not mistaken for this natural phenomenon. The

44 Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 64-65.

45 Boime, “Subversion of Genre,” 439.
 Reese 15

thickly painted waves undulate gently, seeming to gently rock the boat as they pass across

the surface of the sea. The bottom half of the painting is almost entirely water and reflected

image, somewhat filtered through the haziness of early morning light. The composition

draws the viewer into the painting by imitating the view from the shore so that Christ is

furthest from us, and the water separates us from the main narrative scene. In this case the

primary elements of the work are not the figures or their reactions but the light, which

bathes over the event as an encapsulated whole, and the color, which reflects the spiritual

events. Tanner, surely familiar with the biblical description, represents the events

spectacularly: the use of diffused light to show early morning, the spectral figure we know

to be Christ, and the fearful awe in the postures of the disciples, whose faces we cannot see.

The areas of light and shadow are heightened by the aforementioned thickly applied

paint, which creates a sort-of secondary, tactile landscape across the surface of the work.

The evident tactility of the paint surface brings to mind Impressionist influences; the

inclination to show to daub and layer the visibly layered paint was part of the marked turn

from the fine, invisible brushwork of traditional Western painting methods that Monet and

others took decades earlier.

Comparable to this use of nearly monochromatic blues in Christ Walking on Water,

1907, is James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne in Blue and Gold—Old Battersea Bridge, ca.

1872-75 (Figure 4). This is especially appropriate considering the relationship between

Whistler and Monet, friends who were acquainted during Monet’s short time in London in

1871. The two greatly contributed to the development of Impressionism.46 According to art

46Katharine Lochnan, Turner-Whistler-Monet, exhibition catalogue, Tate Publishing, in association with the Art Gallery of
Ontario.
 Reese 16

historian Helene Valance, author of “The Dynamo and the Virgin: Henry Ossawa Tanner’s

Religious Nocturnes,” Whistler “reappropriated the genre of moonlight painting in the

1870s,”47 from artists such as Rembrandt and Caravaggio who capitalized on lighting.

Comparing Tanner and Whistler’s works, both paintings feature high horizon lines, lending

both a sense of verticality. Both place emphasis on the reflective qualities of water, and

both depend on prevailing blue tones—“the most distinctive elements of Whistler’s

Nocturnes.”48 The works, typical to each artist, straddle realism in their waterscape

qualities, but strongly rely on aesthetic abstraction. Valance goes on to argue that Tanner

“blended Whistler’s aestheticism with Eakins’s realist teachings,” in order to promote the

meditative contemplation of religious scenes and imagery.49

Robert Cozzolino, an art historian and author of “‘I Invited the Christ Spirit to

Manifest in Me’: Tanner and Symbolism” (an essay featured in the same catalogue as

Valance’s essay mentioned previously), conquers with this statement, believing that Tanner

used “abstraction [as] a mode of revelation.”50 This use of abstraction links back to

symbolists, who used the “nonimitative, evocative rather than illustrative. One way to

achieve this end was to emphasize the materiality of paint and other media.”51 Symbolists

were at their height in Paris during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries,

the same time that Tanner was active there. Further influence on Tanner included the

Nabis, who exhibited during Tanner’s first year at the Academie Julien (1891). Nabis

47 Helene Valanca, “The Dynamo and the Virgin: Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Religious Nocturnes,” Henry Ossawa Tanner:
Modern Spirit (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in association with the University of California Press,
2012), 127.
48 Ibid, 128.
49 Ibid.
50 Cozzolino, Robert, “’I Invited the Christ Spirit to Manifest in Me’: Tanner and Symbolism,” Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern

Spirit (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and University of California Press, 2012), 119.
51 Ibid, 121-123.
 Reese 17

advocated “illuminating inner experience… [as the] key to presenting a universal

manifestation of divine spirit.”52

Tanner’s other works, including Christ and His Mother Studying the Scripture, 1910,

Mary, 1914, and Moses in the Bulrushes, 1921, use “Tanner’s Blues” and the previously

mentioned strategy to promote contemplative religious scenes. Moses in the Bulrushes is

also a work with a prominent water feature, which uses several values of blues and greens

to create a faintly lit scene. Again, the scene designates areas of water and land only with

subtle variations of blues. Two veiled figures, one standing and one crouching, are

positioned alongside the water on a quiet, dimly lit night. The crouching figure releases a

woven basket, covered in fabric, into the gentle lapping waves. Though we can’t see him,

the viewer knows the basket contains the infant Moses. The main character in this Biblical

story remains unseen, but his presence is emphasized by a sphere of moonlight on the

surface of the water. Notably, the light acts as an indicator of a heavenly identity, just as in

Christ Walking on Water.

Mary, made ca. 1914, uses darker blues to show a contemplative figure draped in

blue robes. Though she is indoors, the lack of natural light or windows suggests the quiet of

night. The brushwork here, like in the previous two paintings mentioned, has a sketchy

quality to it. Deep, navy blue tones are highlighted by the introduction of yellow light from

an oil lamp, which is held close to the figure’s body. Mary, stares into the room,

contemplative or else expectant. Overall the painting portrays an intimate scene, in which

the viewer seems to interrupt the hushed atmosphere. The lamp Mary holds is just inches

52 Ibid, 121.
 Reese 18

away from her abdomen, alluding to her current or impending pregnancy and yet another

example of the use of light as indicative of divine character. Similar to Moses in the

Bullrushes, one of the most major players in the narrative is an unseen infant, pointed out

to the viewer of the painting only by the carefully executed placement of light.

The carefully-considered color relationships—the use of boundless variations of

blues and greens, emphasized by neutral tones— has great impact on the mood of the

viewer, but the use of these particular colors in Tanner’s works were never fully explained

by the artist in his lifetime. Jesse Ossawa Tanner, the artist’s only son, gives us some insight

to a possible motivation behind the striking use of blues. He believed that, to his father,

they were “furnished because of their spiritual comfort; they were the colors of heaven

above.”53 In this context, Jesse Tanner is referring to the literal heavens—the blues of the

sky, seen in Turner’s skies and reflected in his carefully painted waters. This inspiration

from the natural world is furthered by the layered, landscape quality of the paint, creating a

dynamic surface which emphasizes the narrative without distracting from the beauty of the

work. Cross-analysis of a section of a Tanner painting by the Smithsonian Institute shows

the use of 20+ layers of paint, including lead and zinc whites, and cobalt, tin, chromium,

cerulean and viridian blues.54

The zinc white used contributes to another prominent feature in all of the

aforementioned works, which is the use of a “divine” light or luminescence. Keep in mind

that the Christ figure in Christ Walking on Water is essentially an ellipsoid of out-of-focus

Harper, “Early Religious Paintings,” 74 and 78.

53

Amber Kerr-Allison and Brian Baade, “Painting Techniques of Henry Ossawa Tanner,” Smithsonian American Art
54

Museum, Smithsonian Institute of American Art, January 2011. Webcast. Accessed March 15, 2016.
 Reese 19

light, showing Tanner’s predilection towards the symbolic representation over the literal

(another connection to the Nabis and Symbolists working in Paris). While the other works

use light as a way to emphasize the solemn atmosphere or else indicate the presence of a

divine figure in the work, in only two paintings does to the divine figure become the light:

The Annunciation, 1898 (Figure 5), and aforementioned The Disciples See Christ Walking on

Water, 1907.

The Annunciation predates The Disciples See Christ Walking on Water by nine years.

Both express the arrival of a divine figure through the use of an isolated ellipsoid of self-

powered lighting, which is an especially poignant image considering the evolving

technology of electricity in the 1890s. Nikola Tesla presented on a prototype for “elongated

wireless bulbs,” which were powered through “high-frequency electric currents.”55 The

light in The Disciples See Christ Walking on Water, somewhat out of focus in the foggy dawn

environment, is seen to be either a) emanating from within the Christ figure, or else b) the

Christ figure has evolved into the light itself. In The Annunciation, Gabriel is unquestionably

the searing light, which has given up all pretenses of human form. The intensity and

eminence of the radiating, yellow light in The Annunciation is much like the luminescence of

an “elongated” electric bulb, in which the light does not flicker or waiver.

A picture begins to emerge of an artist fueled by religion and spirituality, the most

powerful motivating factors for the artist, and this manifested in a turn from genre

paintings to history paintings—a conscious shift which occurred sometime after the year

1895. Religious painting allowed the artist the freedom to explore color, light, and the

55 Valance, “The Dynamo and the Virgin,” 131.

 Reese 20

potency of certain symbols in compositions of Biblical narrative. The ability to live near the

thriving and evolving Parisian art scene also influenced Tanner’s approach to color, light,

and form, which in turn influenced the way he chose to depict certain religious themes and

figures.

Though Tanner chose to leave behind the Black genre paintings of his early career,

that isn’t to say that depicting race wasn’t an significant factor in his career, nor is it to say

that Tanner turned his back on race relations or helping fellow artists—on the contrary, he

devoted significant time and energy to these very causes. For young artists, a visit to

Tanner’s studio while touring Europe or studying in Paris was an integral learning

experience. Tanner hosted and mentored many of the new generation of Black artists

working in Paris, including William Eduard Scott, William H. Johnson, Palmer Hayden,

Elizabeth Catlett, Hale Woodruff, and James A. Porter.56 Tyler Stovall of Paris Noir calls

Henry Ossawa Tanner “one of the most important African-Americans in the city… the

encouragement he gave to younger artists was fundamental in attracting a new group of

African-American painters and sculptors to Paris in the 1920s.”57

But as the artist said in an interview in 1913, “it is not by accident that I have

chosen to be a religious painter... I paint the things I see and believe.”58 It was ultimately the

call of his upbringing which instilled a solid system of devout belief, and perhaps, in part,

his father’s prompting, which eventually led Tanner towards painting almost exclusively

religious subjects. Benjamin Tucker Tanner wrote on the depiction of religious scenes in

56 Gates and West, The African American Century, 27.

57 Stovall, Paris Noir, 64.
58 Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Advance, 20 March 1913, quoted in Harper, “Early Religious Paintings,” 68.
 Reese 21

1894, asserting that, “By the presentation of visible objects to the eye, divine truths may be

most vividly photographed upon the soul.”59

Henry Ossawa Tanner should be considered and highly regarded for his masterful

technique and unique approach to color and luminosity to engage the viewer. Whether

painting Black themes or religious scenes, he approached the act of painting as a

meaningful and expressive experience. He portrayed religious imagery with the deep

spiritual devotion of a parishioner and the finely-trained eye of an artist. Tanner’s struggle

to succeed in the racially-divided United States prompted his relocation to the city of

light—Paris, France. Exposure in Paris to such groups as the Impressionists, post-

Impressionists, Nabis and Symbolists gave Tanner much source material to amalgamate

into a distinctive style, which he used to the benefit of religious painting. In his later works,

his true style and culminating artistic values emerge.

59Benjamin Tucker Tanner, Theological Lectures (Nashville, TN: AME Church Sunday School Union Publishing House,
1894) 50-51.
 Reese 22

References:

Boime, Albert. “Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” Art Bulletin, vol. 75, Sep.

1993.

Bruce, Marcus, and Henry Ossawa Tanner. Henry Ossawa Tanner: A Spiritual Biography.

New York, NY: Crossroad Pub. Co, 2002.

Frazier, E. Franklin. Black Bourgeoisie. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1957.

Gates, Henry Louise and Cornel West. “Henry Ossawa Tanner,” The African-American

Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Country. New York, NY: Free Press,

2000.

Harper, Jennifer. “The Early Religious Paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner: A Study of

Influences of Church, Family and Era,” American Art vol. 6, no. 4, Autumn 1992.

Hudson, Alexia. “Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy

of Fine Arts, Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies,

Vol. 79, no. 2, Spring 2012.

Kerr-Allison, Amber and Brian Baade. “Painting Techniques of Henry Ossawa Tanner,”

Smithsonian American Art Museum/Smithsonian Institute of American Art, January

2011. Webcast. Accessed March 15, 2016.

Marley, Anna O., ed. Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania

Academy of the Fine Arts and University of California Press, 2012.

Mosby, Dewey F. Across Continents and Cultures: The Art and Life of Henry Ossawa Tanner.

Kansas City, Mo: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1995.

Stovall, Tyler Edward. Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. Boston: Houghton
 Reese 23

Mifflin, 1996.

Tanner, Benjamin Tucker. Theological Lectures Nashville, TN: AME Church Sunday School

Union Publishing House, 1894.

Tanner, Henry Ossawa. “H. O. Tanner to Mrs. Eunice Tietjens,” 25 May 1914, Henry Ossawa

Tanner Papers, 1850-1978, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute,

Washington DC, Roll D308, Frame 119.

Unknown author. “Tanner Exhibits Paintings,” The New York Times, Jan 24, 1924.

Unknown author. “Henry Ossawa Tanner,” The Advance, 20 March 1913.

Unknown author. “Our History,” African Methodist Episcopal Church Official Website.

Accessed March 24, 2016. (http://ame-church.com/our-church/our-history/)

Weinberg, H. Barbara. “Thomas Eakins and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Adapted from

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 52, no. 3, Winter, 1994–1995.

Wilson, Judith. "Lifting "The Veil": Henry O. Tanner's The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful

Poor," Contributions in Black Studies: Vol. 9, Article 4, 1992. Available at:

http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cibs/vol9/iss1/4

Woodruff, Hale. “My Meeting with Henry O. Tanner,” Crisis, January 1970.

Zielonka, Anthony. “Eugune Fromentin and Rembrandt’s Painterly Language of Light,”

Renaissance Quarterly: Vol. 55, Article 3, 2008.

 Reese 24

Figure 1: Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893. Oil on canvas, 49” × 35.5”, Hampton University Museum. Image
via http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/ tanner.html
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Figure 2: Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Thankful Poor, 1894. Oil on canvas, 35” x 44”, Private collection. Image via
http://www.wikiart.org/en/henry-ossawa-tanner/the-thankful-poor-1894
 Reese 26

Figure 3: Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Disciples See Christ Walking on the Water, c. 1907. Oil on canvas, 51.5” x 42”, Des
Moines Art Center. Image via The Catholic Beat, Aug. 14, 2012.
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Figure 4: James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Blue and Gold—Old Battersea Bridge, ca. 1872-75. Oil on canvas, 922 x 760 x
83 mm, Tate Museum. Image via http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/whistler-nocturne-blue-and-gold-old-battersea-
bridge-n01959
 Reese 28

Figure 5: Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Annunciation, 1898. Oil on canvas, 57” x 71 1/4", Philadelphia Museum of Art. Image
via http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/104384.html