Gateway to the Exotic and Escape from the Familiar:
Henry Ossawa Tanner in Tangier, Morocco
Doorey Chung, Princeton Class of 2009
enry Ossawa Tanner’s Gate to the Casbah (1914), set in the city of Tangier in Morocco, represents quite a departure from the rather conservative religious paintings for which Tanner is known, and places both us and the artist in an unfamiliar land away from Western civilization. The very title to Gate to the Casbah makes the painting seem out of place in the body of Tanner’s works, as the plain, descriptive title contrasts with the explicitly Biblical titles of his famous religious paintings, and the palette is not as dark as that of his earlier work (Mosby Across Continents 63). Since he atypically leaves out a narrative theme and coats the interior of the casbah with tones of blue and purple, we can even relate Tanner to the anonymous cloaked figure standing with slight apprehension but also with curiosity 
underneath the entrance to this Moroccan casbah. The figure is about to pass through the gate and step into a different place, as Tanner tried to do not only by painting his uncharacteristic Gate to the Casbah, but by spending several months in the exotic city of Tangier in 1912.
But what did Tanner want to achieve in this unfamiliar setting of Tangier? What was he hoping to find on the other side of the gate? In Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870-1930, Holly Edwards offers a motive for Tanner’s visit to Tangier, noting that North Africa “provided additional stage sets for his favorite Biblical dramas” (Edwards 147). Edwards’ suggestion implies that Tanner sought nothing substantial from Tangier, and only went there in search of superficial new settings for the “Biblical dramas” that he had already learned to portray proficiently through paintings. And while a couple of Tanner’s works based on his visit to Tangier may remind us of the Biblical stories that pervade his other work (Mosby Tanner 228), this seems to have more to do with Tanner’s identity as a religious painter than the actual artwork itself. Gate to the Casbah and the other Tangier works have neither religious titles nor explicit religious references; on the other hand, they depict ordinary Tangier street scenes in a loose Impressionistic manner that is quite different from his typical body of work. So why did Tanner go to Tangier? The answer may lie in the simple observation that Tangier is located in North Africa, a far cry from the Caucasian-dominated world of America and Europe, which saw the African-American Tanner as somewhat of a novelty and a spectacle. Perhaps Tanner’s desire not to be seen as exotic led him to Tangier, where his skin color could blend in and where he could see his surroundings as novel and exotic, instead of the other way around. His search for an escape from the stare of Western eyes may have led him to portray numerous gateways, as the image of the gateway that we saw in Gate to the Casbah reappears throughout Tanner’s Tangier series, reinforcing the idea that going to Tangier was a way out of the often discriminatory white world, and a way into a place where he could simply be an artist. The success of his search is doubtful, however, as in some of these works, these same gateways appear distant and even impassable, which conveys the difficulty Tanner may have had in acclimatizing to a predominantly Muslim atmosphere as a devout Christian, and gives a more complete insight into what Tanner found in Tangier versus what he sought. Tanner would soon return to Europe and his familiar Biblical paintings, making the Tangier series an enchanting but ultimately isolated body of artwork.
The Exhibit
Tanner as a Black Artist
Approaching Tangier
At the Gates
Growing Distance
Leaving Tangier
Works Cited
About the Author
The Gallery
A Brief Biography of Tanner
A Prior Visit to Tangier?
Tangier and Later Religious Works
Sargent in Tangier
Image:
Tanner, Henry Ossawa. Gate to the Casbah, 1914. Private Collection.
