Jean-Joseph-Benjamin Constant, who taught Tanner in Paris, influenced the young American with his vigorous depictions of North African and Middle Eastern life and his portraits, such as "Odalisque," no date. The Baltimore Museum of Art.
Enrolling in 1879 at the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the first full-time black student, Tanner studied for two years under the redoubtable Eakins (1844-1916), who provided a firm grounding in basic, academic disciplines, taught how to use photography in making art and encouraged the young African American to pursue a career in painting. In 1902, Eakins painted an insightful portrait of his introspective former student.
At the outset, while working as an illustrator in Philadelphia, Tanner painted in a realistic, somber-toned style strongly influenced by Eakins, seeking to establish himself as a painter of animals, genre scenes and landscapes. In 1888, he moved to Atlanta where he established a photography studio, taught drawing at Clark College and continued painting. His sketches of poor, rural African Americans were later turned into sentimental genre paintings, such as "The Banjo Lesson," 1893, and "The Thankful Poor," 1894.
In the early 1890s, troubled by rising racial tensions and Jim Crow restrictions in the United States, Tanner concluded that "I cannot fight prejudice and paint." Fortunately, by this time he had attracted the support of several patrons, who helped send him abroad for further study. Although originally planning to go to Rome, he stayed in Paris to study at the Académie Julian under respected academic painters Jean-Joseph-Benjamin Constant and Jean Paul Laurens.
While stressing technical excellence through academic figure studies, and concentration on historical, mythological and religious subjects, academy instructors encouraged experimentation with new styles of painting like Impressionism.
Constant (1845-1902), a frequent traveler to the Middle East and North Africa, was fascinated by the appearance and garb of the natives and by Moorish architecture. Utilizing broad brushstrokes, vivid colors and a strongly molded face and figure, he created a compelling portrait of a harem denizen in "Odalesque" around 1880. While the devout Tanner may have shied away from this subject matter, he admired his teacher's painterly technique and shared his interest in Orientalist subjects.
Tanner was also influenced by the silvery vistas and idealized landscapes of French master painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), exemplified in the show by "Shepherds of Arcadia," circa 1872. While in Brittany, Tanner painted landscapes directly inspired by works of Corot.
In the early 1890s, Tanner began to spend summer months in Barbizon, favored by dark-toned landscapists, and in the fishing village of Pont-Aven in Brittany, whose art colony included Postimpressionist and Symbolist painters. Thereafter, many of his works were permeated by dramatic, mysterious light and muted blue-green color harmonies.
As early as the 1880s he began to depict religious subjects, such as the mysterious, nocturnal depiction of "Joachim Leaving the Temple," circa 1880-85. Curator Smalls suggests that this unusual gouache and graphite image might have been executed during Tanner's student days with Eakins.
This photograph, "Henry Ossawa Tanner holding a palette," circa 1935, shows the expatriate painter in his studio toward the end of his career. Image courtesy of the Henry Ossawa Tanner papers, 1850-1978, in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Several of Tanner's early biblical canvases were favorably received at the Paris Salons. "The Resurrection of Lazarus," 1897, was purchased by the French government, a rare honor for an American painter, and is now at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. A contemporary critic wrote in a Parisian publication that the painting placed Tanner "among the envied ranks of the arrived."
Also in 1897, a Philadelphia businessman and patron, Rodman Wanamaker, then living in Paris, financed Tanner's first trip to the Middle East. In the Holy Land, he gathered material for works on biblical subjects and observed the dress and manner of the people and the architecture and terrain around them. For years the barren landscape, solid buildings, exotic costumes and different cultures of the region appeared in Tanner's paintings, some of which suggest his affinity for the mysterious imagery of the Symbolists. In later years, the artist returned to Palestine and also traveled in Egypt and Morocco, becoming the first important African American artist to visit Africa.
After the turn of the century, he concentrated on the inspirational, miraculous and unearthly aspects of religious subjects. Painting more broadly than before, Tanner manipulated light, shadow and bluish tonalities to achieve dramatic effects. At times, the semiabstract poetry of his work is reminiscent of that of Albert Pinkham Ryder.
One of Tanner's favorite subjects was the Good Shepherd, whom he rendered in some 20 works with varied colors and surface textures designed to evoke spiritual responses. Closely linked in style and theme is "The Disciples See Christ Walking on the Water," circa 1907, based on the Gospel of Matthew. Employing a cool palette of blues, blue-greens and violets, with flashes of silver and white, Tanner symbolized Jesus by a glowing column of light in the upper left, while the dramatic moonlight reflection in the lower left suffuses the nocturne with a mystical feeling.
The loose brushwork and atmospheric quality suggest the influence of Impressionism.
Echoing his earlier theme of knowledge being passed from one generation to the next in works such as "The Banjo Lesson," in "Christ Learning to Read," circa 1911, Tanner depicted a scene from the childhood of Jesus. He used his wife and son as models for this intimate, Impressionistic depiction of family life and religious faith.
Based on a specific site in Morocco, "Near East Scene," circa 1910, demonstrates the way in which Tanner employed elongated figures, free brushstrokes and a chalky palette to evoke a dreamlike ambience. Smalls says that Tanner's North African scenes "recall [Claude] Monet's serial views of haystacks and cathedrals, each pinpointing the color and texture of his subject before the evanescent, ever-changing light alters it."
Tanner and his wife, Jessie Macauley Olssen, owned a small country house in Trepied on the Brittany Coast, which became the center of an American art colony, open to visitors of all races. Here, as in Paris, those who called on Tanner, especially African American artists seeking guidance and encouragement, were struck by his kindness and generosity in extending the hospitality of his home and studio and his willingness to spend time talking and advising them on their careers. His reputation as "the Great Master in Exile" and "Dean of American Painters in France" drew embryonic painters to his doorstep like a magnet.
Drawing on firsthand observations in Morocco, Henry O. Tanner used a muted palette to capture the architecture and ambience of "Near East Scene," circa 1910, Des Moines Art Center.
The expatriate's affinity for the countryside around Trepied is reflected in the luminous nighttime setting of "Le Touquet," circa 1910. The solitary peasant carrying firewood, the isolated trees and rural landscape are rendered in a muted blue tonality with purple accents, bathed in mysterious light. "Tanner's evocative use of a kind of spiritual light resulted from careful studies of Rembrandt van Rijn's use of light as a dramatic element as well as the subtle modulation of light and color achieved by Barbizon, Impressionist and Symbolist painters," says Smalls.
Among the younger black artists who visited Tanner during several years of study in France was Hale Woodruff (1900-1980).
He benefited from the expatriate's conversation and advice, although his style was less academic and more avant-garde than Tanner's. While in France, Woodruff painted the semiabstract "Normandy Landscape," 1928, in which two rows of spindly trees play off against each other across an expanse of field. Woodruff went on to study mural painting with Diego Rivera. While teaching at Atlanta University, he painted a series of murals for the college library, as well as views of life in the rural, segregated South, and celebrated murals depicting the mutiny of slaves aboard the Amistad for Talladega College.
While Tanner was making a name for himself in France, back home new ideas about art, culture and race posed fresh challenges and opened up new opportunities for African Americans. Service in the military in World War I, the Great Migration from the rural South to the industrial North and pronouncements by eminent scholar/philosophers prompted African Americans to demand a new identity based on equality, strength and pride.
The distinguished scholar W.E.B. Du Bois posited that a select few gifted, educated blacks, whom he called the "Talented Tenth," could serve as role models and uplift the entire race.
His ideas had a major influence on the celebrated flowering of artistic and creative talent during the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, 1925-1935.
Concepts of racial pride, of the "New Negro," forcefully advocated by Howard University philosopher Alain Locke, added to the cultural ferment. Locke wrote that "African art, directly approached and sincerely studied, has lessons to teach...lessons of vigorous simplicity and vitality."
Locke encouraged young black artists to find inspiration in their African artistic and cultural heritage, including "primitivist" themes. At the same time, he urged them to incorporate avant-garde approaches, such as those advanced by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, into their art. "The goal," says Smalls, "was for African Americans to assimilate into the American mainstream as fully realized human beings, embracing both their African and European American heritage."
Some black artists, such as Aaron Douglas (1899-1979) - famed muralist of the Harlem Renaissance - undertook ambitious narratives covering the saga of black Americans and their roots in Africa. "Study for Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery Through Reconstruction," 1934, with its uplifting, silhouetted figures, is a preliminary gouache for four mural panels for a Harlem library.
Another Harlem Renaissance artist, James Lesesne Wells (1902-1993), in a striking linoleum cut, "Looking Upward," 1928, utilized African-oriented, stylized forms to depict a black waiter standing amid New York skyscrapers - a symbol of optimism and hope for the future. Such deliberately "pimitivized" works responded to Locke's "New Negro" ideas.
William H. Johnson (1901-1970) migrated north from South Carolina to get academic training at New York's National Academy of Design. He later met Tanner in Paris, but his work was far different from the elder statesman's. Johnson created dynamically contoured, expressionist paintings, such as "Harbor Kerteminde," circa 1930-34, while living in Denmark. Upon his return to the United States, he adopted a colorful, deliberately naive style, featuring flat, simplified forms to depict the lives of his fellow African Americans.
African American historian and artist Romare Bearden used a complex collage technique in creating his version of "Mother and Child," 1970. The Baltimore Museum of Art.
Chairperson of the art department at Texas Southern University for 36 years, John Biggers (1924-2001) created both domestic vignettes, like the hardworking sharecropper in "Cotton Pickers," 1952, and colorful scenes based on travels to Africa.
Beauford Delaney (1901-1979), who followed Tanner's example and pursued his career in Paris, painted both portraits and vigorously brushed, densely colored and deeply textured abstractions, such as untitled (Red), circa 1960.
After moving from North Carolina to New York City, Romare Bearden (1911-1988) specialized in sophisticated collages that bridged the divide between realism and abstraction. An admirer of Tanner's biblical works, he offered a different approach to a popular Christian theme in "Mother and Child," 1970.
Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), arguably the greatest African American artist of all time, grew up in Harlem during the "Renaissance," and devoted his career to recording the history - struggles, pleasures, victories and defeats - of his fellow black Americans. His early series of paintings tracing the lives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and especially his monumental "Migration of the Negro Series," following the exodus of African Americans from the South to the North, have become icons of our art.
Lawrence later painted views of his experiences in the Coast Guard in World War 11 ("Lifeboat," 1945) and episodes from the Civil Rights movement, such as "Two Rebels," a black and white lithograph showing two burly, white policemen carrying the figure of a limp, black Civil Rights protester under the watchful eyes of ten witnesses.
As "Henry Ossawa Tanner and His Influence in America" documents, black artists of later generations worked in African-influenced and modernist styles that differed markedly from the old master's more conventional manner. Moreover, they were much more deeply involved in the social, political and racial realities of the African American experience than the France-based Tanner. Nevertheless, whether they had direct contact with the expatriate titan or not, these black artists who followed learned from his integrity and artistic achievements. This exhibition is a rewarding tribute to a singular figure in American art history - and a useful review of the accomplishments of some of his African American successors.
There is no catalog for the exhibition, but an informative, illustrated brochure is available.
The Baltimore Museum of Art is on Art Museum Drive at North Charles and 31st Streets. For information, www.artbma.org or 410-396-7100.
