As a young artist, Henry Ossawa Tanner showed ample signs of talent but appeared to lack firm direction, painting everything from marine harbors to animals in the nearby Philadelphia Zoo (Skeel). After enrolling in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1879 at the age of twenty, Tanner found guidance from acclaimed artist and Academy professor Thomas Eakins. His mentor’s teachings would influence the aspiring artist for the rest of his life, as Tanner recalls one particularly memorable piece of advice:
“Mr. Thomas Eakins… gave me a criticism which aided me then, and ever since… I had made a start on a study, which was not altogether bad, but very probably the best thing I had ever done. He encouraged but, instead of working to make it better, I became afraid I should destroy what I had done, and really did nothing the rest of the week. Well, he was disgusted. ‘What have you been doing? Get it, get it better, or get it worse. No middle ground of compromise.’” (qtd Mosby Tanner 59)
Although attending the Academy significantly advanced his artistic skills, Tanner would still struggle to make it as an artist over the next decade, as he found it difficult to garner enough funding and support to paint professionally in America.
After seeing some of his white friends from the Pennsylvania Academy leave for Europe to study art, Tanner decided that he needed to do the same. Aware of Tanner’s desire, Joseph Crane Hartzwell, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church that Tanner befriended in Atlanta while trying to run a photography studio, bought several of his paintings so he could just barely have enough money to get to Europe (Mosby Tanner 63). Tanner arrived in Paris in January of 1891 and enrolled in the Académie Julian, where he benefited greatly from exposure to artists’ circles and fellow art students. Also, significant was Tanner’s newfound awareness of the prestigious Paris Salon, as it gave him a concrete goal to strive for as an artist: “Here was something to work for, to get a picture here [into the Salon]” (qtd Mosby Tanner 89).
The first of Tanner’s submissions to the Salon, The Banjo Lesson (1893), was a work he painted in America after he returned home for a year to recover from typhoid fever. The Banjo Lesson stands as one Tanner’s most famous paintings today, due to a tenderness and seriousness that was unseen in artistic portrayals of African-Americans up to that point. A racial motivation was clearly Tanner’s motivation for painting his few African-American genre paintings: “In my mind many of the artists who have 
represented Negro life have only seen the comic, the ludicrous side of it, and have lack sympathy with and affection for the warm big heart within such a rough exterior” (qtd Skeel). Despite the social message of the painting and its notoriety today, The Banjo Lesson did not receive much attention from the Paris art world, albeit winning an honorable mention at the Salon (Mosby Tanner 122). To achieve his goal for success at the Salon, Tanner would drop African-American genre painting in favor of religious painting.
Tanner would indeed find Salon success and widespread critical acclaim for his religious work, with The Resurrection of Lazarus (1896) being among his earliest and most successful religious paintings. The mainstream art world appreciated his religious work so much that not only did Tanner exhibit annually in the Salon until 1914, the French government also bought several of his paintings at hefty sums (Skeel). The reason his religious paintings were so highly regarded is the same reason why his African-American paintings are notable today: tender humanist portrayals of his figures and use of a “sweet and soft” lighting (Brenson). Shortly after Tanner found success as a religious painter, friend and patron Rodman Wanamaker funded the artist to study in the Holy Land on two trips in 1897 and 1898, with the purpose of lending “more authority to [Tanner’s] religious paintings” (Bruce 138). Tanner’s most famous painting from these trips was The Annunciation (1898), which is exemplary of Tanner’s signature light and tender rendering of his subjects.
Tanner would continue painting religious works and gaining international success up to his trip to Tangier, but shortly after his Moroccan trip, the advent of the First World War would disrupt his life in France. He and his family fled to Britain for a few years, and in Britain Tanner displayed a hero’s spirit as he contributed as a lieutenant in the American Red Cross by helping to grow food for army bases and hospitals, all while painting some stirring war scenes (Skeel). After the war, Tanner and his family would return to their peaceful home in France, but the peace in Tanner’s life was shattered when his father Bishop Benjamin Tanner died in 1923 and his wife Jessie died two years later. He appeared to live the rest of his life in state of depression, and perhaps took solace in Christianity as he continued to produce many religious paintings up until his death in 1937, despite his waning fame as an artist (Mosby Tanner 249).
Images:
Tanner, Henry Ossawa. The Banjo Lesson, 1893. Hampton University Museum, Hampton, VA.
Tanner, Henry Ossawa. The Resurrection of Lazarus, 1896. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.
Tanner, Henry Ossawa. The Annunciation, 1898. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA.