Trimmed and Burning: April 2010

Henry Ossawa Tanner (June 21, 1859–May 25, 1937) was an African American artist best known for his style of painting. He was the first African American painter to gain international acclaim.

In 1879 Tanner enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. His decision to attend the school came at an exciting time in the history of artistic institutional training. Art academies had long relied on tired notions of study devoted almost entirely to plaster cast studies and anatomy lectures. This changed drastically with the addition Thomas Eakins as “Professor of Drawing and Painting” to the Pennsylvania Academy. Eakins encouraged new methods such as study from live models, direct discussion of anatomy in male and female classes, and dissections of cadavers to further familiarity and understanding of the human body. Eakins’s progressive views and ability to excite and inspire his students would have a profound effect on Tanner. The young artist proved to be one of Eakins’s favorite students; two decades after Tanner left the Academy Eakins painted his portrait, making him one of a handful of students to be so honored.^[3] At the Academy Tanner befriended artists with whom he would keep in contact throughout the rest of his life, most notable of these being Robert Henri, one of the founders of the Ashcan School. During a relatively short time at the Academy, Tanner developed a thorough knowledge of anatomy and an ability to transfer his understanding of the weight and structure of the human figure to the canvas.^[4]

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Gateway, Tangier, 1912. Oil on canvas, 18 7/16" x 15 5/16". St. Louis Art Museum.

[edit]Issues of race

Tanner’s non-confrontational personality and preference for subtle expression in his work seem to belie his difficulties, but his life was not without struggle. Although he gained confidence as an artist and began to sell his work, racism was a prevalent condition in Philadelphia, as massive numbers of African Americans left the rural South and settled in Northern urban centers. Although painting became a therapeutic source of release for him, lack of acceptance was painful. In his autobiography The Story of an Artist’s Life, Tanner describes the burden of race:

I was extremely timid and to be made to feel that I was not wanted, although in a place where I had every right to be, even months afterwards caused me sometimes weeks of pain. Every time any one of these disagreeable incidents came into my mind, my heart sank, and I was anew tortured by the thought of what I had endured, almost as much as the incident itself.^[5]

In an attempt to gain artistic acceptance, Tanner left America for France in the winter of 1891. Except for occasional brief returns home, he would spend the rest of his life there.

Portrait by Thomas Eakins, 1902

“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)