Very much like a John Singer Sargent painting or a Henry James novel, the two paintings by Henry Ossawa Tanner in the Dallas Museum of Art’s small but rich show on the artist — fresh from months of painstaking conservation treatment — offer a glimpse into the world of sophisticated expatriate Americans in Paris in the years around 1900.
Unlike a Sargent or a James, however, the work of Tanner — who was the son of a prominent bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and who devoted his later career to painting biblical subjects — also gives us the perspective of the first internationally famous Black American artist, who found in France a respite from American racism.
Tanner’s earlier painting in the show, The Thankful Poor from 1894, shows a young boy and his grandfather with their heads bowed in prayer over a humble meal. Their white porcelain dishes, the unadorned wall behind them, and their crisply defined clothing all glow in the white light that streams in from a curtained window at left. Showing the wonder of simple things, the work recalls Dutch genre painting in its luminous stillness.
The later painting, Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures, from around 1908, shows Tanner’s later, more Impressionistic style. With the artist’s Swedish-American wife and son serving as models, dressed in Middle Eastern-style robes and closely examining a long, narrow scroll, the solidity of the forms dissolves amidst the ethereal hue that came to be known as “Tanner blue.”
Both works evoke the religious faith that Tanner witnessed while growing up in the sophisticated Philadelphia home of his father, Benjamin Tanner, an influential clergyman and newspaper editor who gave his son a middle name in honor of antislavery militant John Brown’s 1856 battle at Osawatomie, Kansas.
But while The Thankful Poor addresses Black subject matter with the precise, realistic style that Tanner developed while studying with Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia, Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures reflects the artist’s later cosmopolitanism, once freed from the straitjacket of American prejudice.
Discouraged by the unwillingness of American critics to give his work a fair shake, Tanner sailed for Europe in 1891 and ended up staying permanently in France, where he found success commensurate with his talent. There, he noted, “I am simply Monsieur Tanner,” and he could live in an environment of “absolute social equality.”
Tanner showed in the Paris Salon every year from 1894 to 1914. On several occasions he received honors from, and sold his work to, the French government. After Tanner’s paintings of the biblical Daniel and Lazarus received acclaim in 1897, Philadelphia retail magnate Rodman Wanamaker sponsored his travel to the Holy Land, where his close study of the local people and culture had an effect on his later work.
As Tanner’s renown grew, he warmly received a steady stream of visitors at his home in the Étaples art colony in northern France, including many younger Black American artists eager for advice. Eventually, he was named to the French Legion of Honor and the American National Academy of Design, and he has been recognized ever since as a giant of Black art.
Along with the paintings themselves, visitors can also see photographs that show the progress and results of the conservation treatment and technical study carried out on the two works by conservator Laura Hartman, who worked alone for several months in a museum closed down by the pandemic. The detailed insight into Tanner’s working methods is the next best thing to looking over his shoulder in the studio.
The exhibit also shows the importance of the new, and well-endowed, Art Bridges Foundation, which funded the conservation and study of the paintings on view. The foundation’s mission is to promote American art in museums throughout the United States. It is the brainchild of Fort Worth philanthropist Alice Walton, who also created the world-class Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark.
Art Bridges purchased The Thankful Poor in 2020. Previously, it had been in the Cosby family collection since 1981, when Camille Cosby purchased it as a Christmas present for her husband, entertainer Bill Cosby, setting an auction record at that time for a Black artist.
Here, paired with a work from the DMA’s own collection, it is a sign of Art Bridges’ inclusive vision of American art.
Details
“Focus On: Henry Ossawa Tanner” continues through Jan. 2 at the Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 N. Harwood St. Open Tuesdays through Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free timed tickets required. 214-922-1200. dma.org.
