Henry Ossawa Tanner - Life Abroad

Life Abroad

After an unsuccessful attempt at opening a photography studio in Atlanta and teaching drawing at Clark Atlanta University Tanner traveled to France in 1891, to the Académie Julian, and joined the American Art Students Club of Paris. Paris was a welcome escape for Tanner; within French art circles the issue of race mattered little. Tanner acclimated quickly to Parisian life.

In Paris, Tanner was introduced to many new artworks that would affect the way in which he painted. At the Louvre, Tanner encountered and studied the works of Gustave Courbet, Jean-Baptiste Chardin and Louis Le Nain. These artists had painted scenes of ordinary people in their environment and the effect in Tanner’s work is noticeable. One example is the striking similarity between Tanner’s “The Young Sabot Maker” (1895) and Courbet’s “The Stonebreakers” (1850). Both paintings explore the theme of apprenticeship and menial labor.

He studied under renowned artists such as Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. With their guidance Tanner began to make a name for himself and settled at the Etaples art colony in Normandy. Earlier on, Tanner painted marine scenes that showed man’s struggle with the sea, but by 1895 he was creating mostly religious works. A transitional work from this period is the recently rediscovered painting of a fishing boat tossed on the waves at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. This is based on the description of a miracle in the Gospel of Matthew in which 'the boat was now in the middle of the sea, tossed by the waves, for the wind was contrary' (14:24). The simple resources at Étaples were well adapted to his subject matter, which in several cases featured Biblical figures in dark interiors.

His painting entitled “Daniel in the Lions Den”, was accepted into the 1896 Salon. Later that year he painted “The Resurrection of Lazarus”. The critical praise for this piece solidified Tanner’s position in the artistic elite and heralded the future direction of his paintings, to mostly biblical themes. Upon seeing "The Resurrection of Lazarus", art critic Rodman Wanamaker offered to cover an all expenses-paid trip for Tanner to the Middle East. Wanamaker felt that any serious painter of biblical scenes needed to see this environment firsthand and that a painter of Tanner's caliber was well worth the investment. Tanner quickly accepted the offer. Before the next Salon opened, Tanner set forth for Palestine. Explorations of various mosques and biblical sites as well as character studies of the local population allowed Tanner to further his artistic training. His paintings developed a powerful air of mystique and spirituality. Tanner was not the first artist to study the Middle East in person. Since the 1830s, a growing interest in Orientalism had been growing in Europe. Artists such as Eugène Delacroix and later Henri Matisse made such tours to capitalize on this curiosity.