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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations
The Graduate School
2003
Henry Ossawa Tanner: Race, Religion, and
Visual Mysticism
Kelly Jeannette Baker
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
HENRY OSSAWA TANNER: RACE, RELIGION, AND VISUAL MYSTICISM
By
KELLY J. BAKER
A Thesis submitted to the
Department of Religion
in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts.
Degree Awarded:
Fall Semester, 2003
The members of the Committee approve the thesis
of Kelly J. Baker defended on September 10, 2003.
John Corrigan
Professor Directing Thesis
Amanda Porterfield
Committee Member
Amy Koehlinger
Committee Member
Approved:
John Kelsay, Chair, Department of Religion
Donald J. Foss, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.
ii
To my mother and my husband Chris,
without them my work would not be possible.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank all the wonderful people, who helped me through this creative process. The
Department of Religion faculty has been increasingly helpful through discussions, lectures, and
quiet prodding to different sources and theories. Dr. John Corrigan guided me into this project,
and his questions and suggestions made my text better and more thoughtful. My colleagues in
the American Religious History track have listened to my ideas about Tanner for several
semesters, and they clarified my concerns and provoked great discussion. Heather Nicholson
gave poignant suggestions to my project, and she pointed to more than one text, which proved
beneficial. Michael Pasquier and Howell Williams provided insight, but more importantly, we
struggled through this process together supporting and learning from one another along the way.
Thanks to the Florida State Library Interlibrary Loan and the Smithsonian American Art
Archives, their help was crucial in tracking down often-obscure sources. Louise Ann Bayley of
the Smithsonian was particularly helpful with my requests. I also greatly appreciate the
museums and collections that allowed me to reproduce images of Tanner’s paintings. These
institutions and people are the Phillips Collection, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The
Newark Museum, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Hampton University, Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, Art Resource, and the Musee d’Orsay. Finally, my husband deserves
thanks because he listened to my frustrations, proofed my thesis, and supported the merit of my
project. Hannah, Sophie, and Belle proved to be more distracting than helpful, but their furry
energy revived me more than once.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures ...................................................................................................... vi
Abstract ............................................................................................................... vii
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1
1. HENRY OSSAWA TANNER, LIFE ............................................................. 10
2. HENRY OSSAWA TANNER, WORK ......................................................... 18
3. VISUAL MYSTICISM ................................................................................... 32
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 47
FIGURES ............................................................................................................. 49
APPENDIX A....................................................................................................... 58
NOTES ................................................................................................................. 67
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................ 77
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ............................................................................... 84
v
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1, Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson (1893) ................................ 49
Figure 2, Tanner, The Thankful Poor (1894), .......................................................50
Figure 3, Tanner, Christ and Nicodemus (1899) ................................................. 51
Figure 4, Tanner, The Resurrection of Lazarus (1897) ........................................ 52
Figure 5, Tanner, The Annunciation (1898) ......................................................... 53
Figure 6, Tanner, Daniel and the Lion’s Den (1916) ........................................... 54
Figure 7, Tanner, The Good Shepherd (1902-1903)............................................. 55
Figure 8, Tanner, The Good Shepherd: Lost Sheep (1922) .................................. 56
Figure 9, Thomas Eakins, Miss Amelia van Buren (1886-91).............................. 57
vi
ABSTRACT
According to some scholars, religion is inseparable from the African-American
experience. Others viewed race as almost a separate ontological category from religion. How
can it be possible for scholars to view the relationship between race and religion so differently?
“Henry Ossawa Tanner: Race, Religion, and Visual Mysticism” seeks to understand the complex
relationship between religion and race and to explore Tanner’s visual mysticism by examining
his life and paintings. Tanner was an African-American artist in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, whose body of work consisted of landscapes, genre paintings, and religious
narratives. It will be argued that he considered his religious paintings to be his most important
work.
The case of Henry Ossawa Tanner, his life and art, demonstrates the dialectical
relationship between race and religion. These two identities were in conversation with each
other in his life and in his art. Tanner was shaped by his African Methodist Episcopal
background, which provided the religious lens through which he viewed life and drew inspiration
for his art. Tanner also faced racism, because he was an African-American artist in the time
period when to be such was an anomaly, and criticism from his peers because he chose to paint
religious themes instead of racial ones. Despite criticism, Tanner remained devoted to his
religious works, and many proposed that Tanner was a mystic. This thesis will promote that
Tanner was not only a mystic but also a visual mystic by painting on canvas his religious
experience and its universal elements. The artist hoped to communicate religious experience to
the viewers of his paintings, and he desired to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the world
and the interaction between divinity and humanity. For Tanner, painting was a way to connect to
viewers, but it was also an act of religious devotion the moment his brush touched the canvas.
vii
INTRODUCTION
In 1969, there was a revival and reevaluation of the Henry Ossawa Tanner’s art.
Previous art historians had largely ignored the artist, who lived in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. The controversy over Tanner’s art and life fascinated and frustrated scholars
and public intellectuals as the artist and his work had confounded those of his own period. One
journalist classified the obsession and frustration with the artist “The Henry Tanner Hangup,”1
and a major component of this “hangup” was how to classify the artist and his work. This
particular journalist was offended by the lack of “blackness” in Tanner’s art, a sensitivity that
pinpointed where much of the confusion over the artist was derived. The artist was an African
American who primarily painted biblical scenes with Jewish figuration. The revival of Tanner’s
art was a part of the cultural revival for African Americans, who were redefining the terms of
their own “blackness” and seeking to uncover a history of their people that had been ignored and
neglected. Of course, Henry Ossawa Tanner was part of this history, but he did not fit the mold
some were seeking. The artist was conflicted about his racial heritage, and his work centered
mainly on religious themes rather than racial ones. His work became problematic and difficult to
categorize. Many had views similar to the aforementioned journalist, thinking that Tanner
ignored his racial heritage, and some focused on the importance of Tanner as a lineage for
African American artists, and on his perseverance, which allowed him to cross racial barriers and
achieve international acclaim.
Many labels have been attached to Tanner including Negro artist, race traitor, American
artist, a Romantic Realist, religious mystic, and a painter of biblical scenes. The body of his
work ranges from seascapes to landscapes to black genre to the grand religious paintings that
compose the majority of his œuvre. The white press and academy initially labeled Tanner as a
“Negro” artist based on his race rather than his work, which offended the artist because his
artistic merit was ignored in favor of his racial heritage.2 However, African American
intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Alain Locke agreed with the label
of “Negro artist” for Tanner, but for different and complicated reasons. Tanner was the first
African American painter of international acclaim, and during his time period, he was thought to
be one of the greatest painters America had produced. Thus for black intellectuals, he became
representative of the potential of people with African ancestry and a symbol, at least for Du Bois,
of the “Talented Tenth,” “the gifted role models standing as irrefutable evidence against racist
claims of inferiority and destined to guide and inspire the rest.”3 This artist became a beacon of
what the race could achieve. He was an exemplar of the artistic ability of the race, which
demonstrated to Alain Locke that African Americans had reached the pinnacle of civilization and
should no longer be discriminated against nor denied their proper place in society. The burden
of this label, of course, was that it affirmed the white position on African Americans in the
artistic field and confirmed the difference or otherness of the race in comparison to white artists.
The artist also disliked the identification of his art with race.
Tanner opposed the labeling of himself as a Negro because he wanted to be judged on his
artistic merit instead of his cultural heritage. In 1914 letter to Eunice Tietjens, Tanner stated,
“Now am I a Negro? Does not the 3/4 of English blood in my veins…count for anything? Does
the 1/4 or 1/8 of ‘pure’ Negro blood count for all?”4 Instead, Tanner preferred to be classified
1
as an American artist, which he believed encapsulated all of his experiences including but not
limited to his racial heritage. W.E.B. Du Bois understood the significance of Negro artist being
classified as American artists for Tanner and other black artists. He proposed for the black artist
to be understood as an “American” artist signified that he/she was finally recognized as human
as well,5 which indicated that race would no longer be a barrier for the black artist. For Du Bois
and Tanner, recognition of the humanity of African Americans was equated with American
status. Distinguishing Tanner as an American artist was also problematic because he chose to
live in France for the majority of his life as a way to escape the racism still prevalent in the
United States. Many scholars and journalists have described him as an expatriate, but Rae
Alexander-Minter, his grandniece, has suggested that Tanner did not claim to be an expatriate
because it was a “privilege” given only to white Americans.6 Complexities abound when
scholars attempt to classify Tanner and his work with a single label. The life and work of Henry
Ossawa Tanner are intertwined with ideas about race, art, and religion. He was a race painter for
a short time and a religious painter for most his life. Race and religion consumed Henry O.
Tanner and exuded onto his canvases. Race and religion formed a close relationship in the life
and art of Tanner because they were interwoven in his religious background. The case of Henry
Ossawa Tanner, his life and art, demonstrated the dialectical relationship between religion and
race. These two facets of his life were in conversation with one another, and each informed the
other. The artist’s A.M.E. background contained a blending of religion and race, which molded
the way that Tanner examined, understood, and depicted the world around him. From his
religious upbringing and his concern with race and racism emerged a form of mysticism, which
affected Tanner’s life and art. Due to barriers he faced, Tanner turned to God and painting for
solace and reassurance, and he began to see the interconnectedness of the world. His
relationship with God was mystical, and I will argue that Tanner was a visual mystic because he
painted his own personal experience with God while attempting to provide his viewers with a
connection to God and humanity. Henry Ossawa Tanner was a complex man and a complex
artist, and many scholars have attempted to understand how religion and race, interwoven facets
of his life, were represented in his work and how his religious experiences, including his
mysticism, appeared in his art.
Marcia M. Matthews was the first official biographer of Henry O. Tanner, and she
focused on Tanner strictly as an American artist whose most important works were his biblical
paintings. In Henry Ossawa Tanner: American Artist (1969), she chronicled Tanner’s life from
origins in America to the expatriate life in Paris, and she mentioned the difficulty that his racial
heritage caused in the American art world. Matthews downplayed Tanner’s commentary about
his racial heritage and the effects of racism on his career, and she discussed the religious
background of Tanner’s youth and his move away from denominational Christianity to Christian
Science to mysticism. Her work is considered the standard biography of Henry Ossawa Tanner,
but she did not explore the nuances of his identity. Matthews’s concern was to portray this artist
as she believed he wanted to be portrayed—simply as an American artist.
In Across Continents and Cultures (1995), Dewey F. Mosby countered Matthews’s
argument that Tanner should be viewed as an American artist because Mosby proposed that one
could not study Tanner without regard to his race because Tanner “was inspired by his cultural
heritage.”7 Mosby claimed that Tanner’s art reflected his life, and thus, his race. Race was a part
of Tanner’s religious works because it was a component of his identity. Mosby’s evidence for
the combination of religious and racial narratives was the artist’s choice of biblical themes that
appealed to African Americans: birth, resurrection, and persevering faith. In Henry Ossawa
2
Tanner (1991), Mosby and Darrell Sewell proposed that racism had a lasting effect on Tanner’s
life and art, and Mosby’s aforementioned work was a continuation of these ideas. The authors
pointed out that Tanner initially was concerned with the portrayal of African Americans in
previous artistic work, yet they suggested the artist did not want to bear the burden of creating
“Negro Art.” Mosby was one of the primary art historians that focused on race as implicit and
obvious in Tanner’s art, and he proposed that Tanner chose religious themes that portrayed a
racialized message. For Mosby and Sewell, Tanner was an African American artist.
A History of African American Artists (1993), co-written by Romare Bearden and Harry
Henderson, presented biographies and works of African American artists from 1792 to the
1980’s. Bearden and Henderson studied the religious beliefs that affected many African
American artists like Henry Ossawa Tanner as well as their artwork. Bearden and Henderson
acknowledged that religious backgrounds of African American artists often influenced their
works and lives. Both authors also demonstrated how Tanner was influenced deeply by his
father’s sermons and writings, and how he applied these themes in his work. It appeared as well
that they thought Tanner used religious themes to portray the racial, which meant he
appropriated biblical themes and narratives that often conveyed ideas of the African American
experience including the struggle for freedom, prejudice, oppression, and the belief that God
could deliver them from these forms of adversity.
Several dissertations have been written on Tanner, his life and work. In his “Insuperable
Obstacles,” Naurice Woods, Jr. described the effects of racism on Tanner and three other
nineteenth century artists and how they were able to overcome the “insuperable obstacles” of
racism and achieve greatness. Once again, the main thrust of this Tanner scholarship was to
address the effects of race on Tanner’s life and work. Woods also produced another dissertation8
that specifically examined Henry O. Tanner and the psychological impacts of racism, but this
author did not describe the impact of religious belief on the artist and his work. Woods identified
race as the most important aspect of Tanner’s life that influenced his paintings and his choice of
subject matter for these paintings. In “Figuring Belief,” Kristin Schwain provided an engaging
discussion of Tanner’s depiction of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church’s
doctrines and beliefs, which she described as visual exegesis. Schwain contended that Tanner
had been viewed generally as an African American Christian and that Tanner should be
examined from a denominational standpoint instead. She also noted that there was a relationship
between religion and race in the A.M.E, but she did not explore the nature of the connection.
Her case, however, focused on themes of Christianity that were general or universal rather than
specific to the A.M.E., and she did not scrutinize the artist’s distancing from his denomination
during the later years of his life in which he became more spiritual and mystical. Instead, she
affirmed that Tanner was concerned with Christian values and that he represented Christianity
broadly in his work, though these themes were probably derived from the artist’s A.M.E
background. Her work was important because she provided a different angle of approach for the
relationship between religion and race as they are portrayed and understood in the work of Henry
O. Tanner.
Marcus Bruce’s Henry Ossawa Tanner: A Spiritual Biography (2002) is the most recent
biography centered on Tanner’s religious background and the spirituality expressed in his work.
Bruce argued that Tanner was a religious person as well as a racial person, and that the
relationship between these identities often caused conflict in the life of Henry O. Tanner. The
artist was trapped between the “burden” of representing his race and his own desire to paint his
“unique vision,”9 which was shaped by his religious beliefs, and later, his mysticism. Bruce, like
3
Mosby, noted that cultural heritage shaped Tanner’s choice of subject, and like Mosby, Bruce
implied that race was found in Tanner’s biblical scenes. Unlike previous scholars, the artist’s
religious life and how it was uncovered on the canvas were central to Bruce’s interpretation.
Like Matthews, Bruce deemed Tanner a religious mystic, who focused on glimpsing the divine
through the act of painting. His religious experience took precedence over his experiences of
race and racism, and religion informed how the artist defined the world and himself. Religious
identity was crucial to Tanner though Bruce proposed that he was more spiritual than
denominational because his religious tendencies were not structured in his later years by the
denomination of his youth. To Bruce, the artist was a mystic who was more concerned with
universal facets of Christianity rather than the denominational strictures of the A.M.E. Church.
Thus, it would seem that if Bruce had to choose a label for Tanner, it would be religious artist.10
Obviously, scholars have studied Tanner with various and multi-faceted methods, and these
attempts were further complicated by the classification of Tanner as an African American artist.
To understand the “problem” of labeling Henry O. Tanner, it is necessary to understand
what is implied by this appellation. As mentioned earlier, the classification in its first sense was
derived from white scholars and press, who labeled any artist of African descent a “Negro artist.”
In 1910, Benjamin Brawley produced one of the first works on Negro art entitled The Negro in
Literature and Art, in which he catalogued all the great Negro artists and writers of the time
period. Brawley did not define the classification, but one can safely assume that his
determining factor for inclusion of artists in the volume was racial heritage. In 1918 and 1921,
Brawley produced new editions of his work that he renamed The Negro in Literature and Art in
the United States, and Henry O. Tanner was included in all three editions as “the painter of
assured fame and commanding position.”11 In this edition, Brawley desired to demonstrate that
there were two things observable about the Negro. First, the distinctions that the Negro had
made were always in the arts, and second, any influence by the Negro on American culture had
been in the realm of aesthetics.12 The author did not allow any question of the Negro’s talents in
the arts, and he stated, “the Negro, with all his manual labor, is destined to reach his greatest
heights in the field of the artistic.”13
Despite his eagerness to assert the Negro’s place in the arts, Brawley’s idea that artistic
talent was received from manual labor degraded the individual talent of the artists and harkened
back to manual labor forced upon enslaved blacks. He showed achievement of African
Americans in art, which was admirable, but his justification of why this achievement occurs was
faulty. Brawley’s reliance on Negro manual labor as the reason for advancement in the arts was
disconcerting because he inevitably limited African Americans to the artistic field. His attempt
to bring recognition to these artists was praiseworthy, but instead of demonstrating the
importance of this art, he promoted the idea that the art’s distinctiveness came from the race of
the artist. Brawley’s commentary justified that the African American’s place in the arts was not
uncommon position, but his method was not the only way to explore the position of African
Americans in the arts.
In the 1920’s, Alain Locke became the leading spokesperson for the formation of the
canon of Negro art. Locke was considered the “the fireball” of the Harlem Renaissance, and he
was the lone African American intellectual to discuss art in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Locke noted
early on that art was often a reflection of society’s values, and thus, he noticed the need for
positive imagery of African Americans in the arts. Therefore, in his The New Negro, Locke
proposed a mission for the “rehabilitation of the race” to circumvent the loss of esteem that had
occurred because of the institution of slavery.14 Slavery had degraded blacks in the eyes of the
4
white public, and it degraded the self-esteem that blacks had for themselves. Portrayals of blacks
by white artists relied on gross stereotypes that affirmed inferiority and a less-than-human status,
and these portrayals reflected the white public’s ideas about African Americans.
Locke called for a change of the visual representations of blacks to change the
perceptions of the race; therefore, he asserted the importance of “positive” representation of
African Americans. The vision of the Old Negro associated with enslaved blacks, according to
Locke, must be discarded because he/she has been “a stock figure” and a “creature of moral
debate and historical controversy.”15 Instead the focus should be on the New Negro, who had
improved socially, economically, and intellectually since the emancipation of slaves. By
discarding this stereotype of the Old Negro, which was steeped in ideas about slavery, the
greatest rehabilitation of society could be reached for African Americans. This rehabilitation
would be “the revaluation by white and black alike of the Negro in terms of his artistic
endowments and cultural contribution, past and prospective.”16 Locke, however, did not seem
so sure that this revaluation or the discarding of stereotypes would occur by both black and
white, so Negro artists were to be responsible for providing images to counter the stereotypes. In
his “Legacy of the Ancestry of Arts,” Locke argued that African-American artists should
contradict stereotypes with positive images of their people, and they should look to the artistic
heritage of Africa for inspiration and guidance. He required African-American artists to portray
their race with dignity and “reveal the beauty which prejudice and caricature have overlaid.”17
In this essay, Locke also discussed the artistic heritage of Africa that had an arts and
crafts tradition that has been lost due to slavery. The institution of slavery not only detached the
Negro from his/her land and people but also severed the Negro from his/her cultural roots.
Negro artists should ascertain knowledge of this tradition; so, they could carry on this artistic
heritage in America and combine it with the American experience and life. Locke presumed this
combination would make the Negro the artist of American life.18 Thus, Locke proposed that this
category should include harkening back to Africa for themes and style of one’s work while
supplying positive images of the Negro. The Negro artist, then, should include themes of Africa
in his/her work and should have a social responsibility to represent the race with dignity. Locke
placed the responsibility of racial uplift upon the shoulders of these artists, and he lamented the
previous lack of development of a Negro school of art. There had been successful Negro artists
in America, but these artists did not fulfill their social responsibility for the creation of a new
canon of art. Henry Tanner became Locke’s prime example of this type of artist. Locke stated:
Our Negro American painter of outstanding success is Henry O. Tanner. His career is a
case in point. Though a professed painter of types, he has devoted his art talent mainly to
the portrayal of Jewish biblical types and subjects, and has never maturely touched the
portrayal of the Negro subject.19
This artist, according to Locke, had the potential to portray the Negro subject, but instead chose
to paint biblical scenes. Artists like Tanner were the reason that “we have not” a canon of Negro
art because “the generation of Negro artists succeeding Mr. Tanner had only inspiration of his
great success to fire their ambitions” instead of the much needed guidance “of a distinctive
tradition to focus and direct their talents.”20 In Locke’s view, Tanner ignored his social
responsibility as an African American by portraying biblical scenes rather than portraying his
race with dignity. The hefty responsibility that Locke pushed onto Negro artists marked a
change in the view of what Negro art should be. It became harder to label artists and their work
5
“Negro” because the judgment no longer involved just racial heritage. Instead, Negro art was to
embody the African American experience in America and Africa and to show the humanity of an
oppressed race. Tanner did not fit Locke’s categorization, yet he continued to be described as an
African American artist for historical lineage of the canon. He was still a beacon of what the
Negro could do.
W.E.B. Du Bois was more sympathetic to the plight of the Negro artist than Locke.
Locke’s call for a racial art did not incorporate the complete African-American experience. His
racial art though it claimed to include American experience minimized the importance of this
experience and centered on the African themes and removing stereotypes. Many AfricanAmerican artists and intellectuals were stifled by Locke’s emphasis of African ancestry, and
many were attempting to figure out what it meant to be American and a Negro. W.E.B. Du Bois
was the best articulator of these two competing identities, and scholars, intellectuals, and artists
related to his discussion of “double consciousness.” Du Bois proposed that African Americans
had double consciousness, which was a second sight that allowed them to see themselves as
society sees them. He stated, “One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls,
two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged
strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”21 Du Bois thought that the Negro had these
competing identities, the Negro and the American, which could not be reconciled. According to
Du Bois, the Negro did not want to Africanize America because America still has much to teach
Africa. Yet he/she also could not accept the “whiteness” of America because the Negro had an
“important message for the world.”22 In essence, the Negro was caught between American and
African roots, and he/she had to negotiate a role in the world while not quite belonging
anywhere. Du Bois noted that the Negro artist in particular faced a similar, often harsher
struggle. Du Bois stated:
The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan—on the one hand to escape white
contempt for a nation of mere hawers of wood and drawers of water, and on the
other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde—could only
result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either
cause.23
The artist not only had to struggle with white hatred and criticism, but also had to create art for
the Negro community, who often was poverty-stricken and did not find the purpose of the artist’s
craft. The artist, thus, was misunderstood by both black and white, and yet, still struggled to
make his/her work both Negro and American. Du Bois pointed out that agreement of blacks and
whites on the capability of Negro artists in the past, which was “this work must be inferior
because it comes from colored people.”24 The role of the black artist was tenuous, but he also
saw the value in the production of art and its importance. Du Bois like Locke also understood
the importance of the depiction of blacks. He pointed out that African Americans were not
ashamed of their color or ancestry, but they were ashamed of “caricatures done of our darker
sides” because it served as a reminder of “the crimes of Sunday ‘comics’ and ‘Nigger’
minstrels.”25 He noticed the problem of representation and the need for depictions to counter
these horrifying stereotypes.
Du Bois, however, did not call for a racial art, but instead, he commented on the
situation of the Negro artist. He, it seems, noted the importance of the struggle between
American and Negro identities and the need for reconciliation if possible, and he wanted to
6
demonstrate that these identities cannot be separated because both were intertwined in the
identity of the African American. It is possible that Du Bois was aware of the burden that Locke
was placing on Negro artists and knew this social responsibility would make an artist’s doubleconsciousness even more divisive. Thus, Negro art had been reevaluated, and the Negro artist’s
role became more challenging with higher expectations. Tanner, by Locke’s definition, was not
a Negro artist because most of his subject matter did not uplift the race or counter the caricatures
of African Americans. As mentioned before, Tanner was crucial as an example to young Negro
artists because his career demonstrated the potential to overcome prejudice and succeed in a
white dominated art world. Thus, many still classified Tanner as a Negro artist to maintain an
African American artistic heritage. Classifying Henry O. Tanner became more difficult than
ever with Locke’s new parameters of what Negro art should be, and the varying themes of
Tanner’s artwork also add to confusion.
Tanner’s beginning works were landscapes and seascapes. For a brief period of time, the
artist created several black genre pieces, including The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful Poor,
which led many to believe that Tanner would become the Negro artist that counteracted the
stereotypes of African Americans.26 W.S. Scarborough, a family friend and leading black
intellectual, commented, “When ‘The Banjo Lesson’ appeared many of the friends of the race
sincerely hoped that a portrayer of Negro Life by a Negro artist had arisen indeed…to
counterbalance…the most extravagantly absurd and grotesque.”27 Scarborough continued his
lament of Tanner’s lack of black genre paintings with a discussion of the artist’s religious
background. “His early home atmosphere had always been strongly religious…it had long been
the wish of his father’s heart that his son should paint Biblical subjects,” stated Scarborough,
“turn his genius into religious channels and thus make his art serve religion.”28 The author
proposed that the artist had turned to the higher calling of religious painting due to the influence
of his father. To some including Scarborough, Tanner chose his religious background for
inspiration of his paintings rather than his racial background. Religion was the artist’s
inspiration instead of his racial heritage. What inspired Tanner was more complex than one
identity inspiring him more than the other; he was molded by both religious and racial
experiences. These experiences were bound together in a dialectical relationship due to the
artist’s denominational background.
Henry Ossawa Tanner grew up in a religious household that was enriched and inspired by
the teachings of African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church. His father, Benjamin Tucker
Tanner, was initially an itinerant minister for the A.M.E., and later became the editor of The
Christian Recorder, a bishop, and a powerful theologian who discussed and defended the
African’s place in the Bible. The A.M.E. tradition was based upon the ideas of social protest and
racial uplift. The denomination was founded by Richard Allen as a form of protest against
“racial discrimination cloaked in religiosity.”29 The denomination forged a relationship between
race and religion early on, and these two identities were bound together in denominational
doctrine and theology. Racial uplift, education, and social protest were the cornerstones of this
denomination that was born out of the inequality African Americans faced in white churches.
With the A.M.E., a relationship between religion and race was created in which these two
identities informed the other and in some instances appeared inseparable. The denomination, its
theology, its doctrine, and its concern for social justice, provided Henry Tanner with the lens to
view the world. His A.M.E. background fostered a commingling of race and religion that shaped
the way the artist understood and represented the world around him. Ideas about race blended
with ideas about religion, and vice versa, from the beginning of this denomination, and thus, for
7
Tanner, there was a dialectic relationship between these two facets of life. As Tanner’s life
progressed, this connection fostered a form of mysticism for the artist. Due to the barriers of
race, the artist turned to religion for solace, and he developed a mystical relationship with God.
Through this relationship, he came to believe that the world was interconnected through divinity.
The whole world was kin, and Tanner expressed this sentiment in his art to demonstrate the
arbitrary barriers of race. From an early age, the artist fostered his spirituality, and God and his
art gave him comfort and reassurance when he confronted barriers and struggles in his life. His
visual mysticism was an extension of this comfort in God, and his paintings were his venue to
make right what he thought was wrong with the world. Tanner could lift racial barriers by
depicting the universality of the human experience and the connection that each person had with
God. If each person was connected to God, then there would be no need for boundaries or
barriers. His mysticism was portrayed visually on his canvas to show his relationship with God
and the potential of others to partake in a similar relationship, but more importantly, Tanner
wanted to connect a disjointed world in his art.
The case of Henry Ossawa Tanner, his life and art, demonstrates the dialectic between
race and religion. These two identities were in conversation with each other in his life and his
art. Tanner was shaped by his A.M.E. background, which provided the religious lens through
which he viewed life and drew inspiration for his art. This background also provided the
connection for race and religion for Tanner because his father, Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner,
found that religion was not free of racism, and thus, religion was not free from race. Religion
and race were intertwined in the life and experiences of the artist, and thus, previous scholarship
that focused on one aspect of his identity instead of noting the importance of both will be
enhanced by an exploration of the interconnectedness of these identities for Henry Tanner. This,
however, does not imply that race was implicit or obvious in Tanner’s paintings, but race and
religion informed his choice of subject matter or themes for his art. Equally crucial to
understanding the artist and his work was the proposition that Tanner was a religious man whose
piety and religiosity emanate from his canvases. He should be considered visually pious because
of his methods of approaching his art and because painting was a religious act for him. Tanner
can also be considered a visual mystic, who painted religious experience and its universal and
human elements on canvas. Another aspect of Tanner’s life that is necessary to consider is
identifying whether he was a “visual mystic” and what this term implies and means. It is useful
to categorize Tanner as a visual mystic because his mysticism was the fruition of his religious
and racial background. Tanner was ill at ease with the world around him because of arbitrary
barriers and the prevalence of injustice. He, thus, painted biblical narratives where good
triumphed and adversity was always overcome, which was how he wished the world would
become. The artist was a mystic because of his personal relationship to God and his devotion to
God. He expressed his mysticism visually to connect viewers of his paintings to the divine and
to the rest of humanity. His paintings were a demonstration of the interaction between the divine
and humanity and a venue for this interaction to occur. His work transcended racial barriers to
show the interconnectedness of the world and the universal humanity of all. Tanner’s art
depicted his mysticism and his need to show that no one was ever alone because of the bonds
between human and divine. By examining the artist as a visual mystic, it is clear that his
mysticism was an extension of his experiences of race and religion in the A.M.E. because he
sought to reconcile his religious understanding of the world with his experiences as an African
American. His mysticism was the fruition of his seeking because he discovered, and depicted,
the connection each person has to divinity and to each other. He proposed that race was an
8
artificial barrier because of the humanity that people share. By classifying Tanner as visual
mystic, it is clear that his religious paintings are the continuation of his black genre paintings in
which he was exhibiting facets of universal humanity to unite people over arbitrary boundaries.
Henry Ossawa Tanner, thus, is not only a case study for the relationship of race and religion in
his life and art but also to display what it means to be categorized as a visual mystic and how this
categorization will provide a better understanding of his life and art.
9
CHAPTER 1: HENRY OSSAWA TANNER, LIFE
In 1856, John Brown, supposed pro-slavery advocate, with his men attacked the small
town of Osawatomie, Kansas and killed five slavery supporters. In 1859, Henry, the first of
Benjamin Tucker (B.T.) and Sarah Tanner’s seven children, was born in Pittsburgh. Though
these two events might appear unrelated, a spirit of reform and justice connects them. B.T.
Tanner, an African American minister, chose to honor John Brown’s abolitionist sentiments and
actions by naming his son Henry “Ossawa” Tanner. Ossawa was a veiled reference to the attack
on Osawatomie that protested the institution of slavery, and the elder Tanner desired to pass on
the magnitude of African American struggle against oppression and enslavement, hope for
emancipation and true freedom, and emphasis on morality and fairness to his son. Thus early on,
Henry Ossawa Tanner was marked by his father’s lifelong activism and passion for social
justice. Henry Tanner’s parents both shaped his life and work, and thus, it is necessary to discuss
their intellectual as well as spiritual endowments and how racism affected them in order to see
how it, in turn, affected Tanner.
B.T. Tanner was born in Pittsburgh in 1835, and he had the advantage that many African
Americans of the time period did not, growing up free in a slave society. He began his career as
a barber to pay for his education and eventually became a minister, an editor of The Christian
Recorder, a board member of Howard University and other African American educational
institutions, and above all, an activist for the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church as
well as for the race. The ministry was not a route to preach for B.T. Tanner, but instead a
method to pursue religious scholarship and advocate for the race. The elder Tanner was
passionate about the injustice of slavery in America and the prejudice that African Americans
faced. In the spring of 1859, B.T. Tanner was removed from Pittsburgh’s Masonic Hall for
refusing to sit in the black section at an anti-slavery lecture, and he filed a lawsuit for assault and
battery because of this forcible removal.30 In 1860, he became an “official” advocate for the
denomination as well as for African Americans when he was given his pastoral certificate, which
began his career as a minister and as theologian. His An Apology for African Methodism was
published in 1867. It described the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and
importance of this institution for the race. B.T. Tanner stated, “Slavery and prejudice, stood up
like demons before Allen and his compeers, and forbade them to use the talents which God had
given.”31 Thus, Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others founded the new denomination with
the intent to give African Americans autonomy unlike white denominations, which restricted
their actions and dictated their beliefs. The institution existed because of the effects of white
racism on subordinating blacks, but B.T. Tanner proposed that the A.M.E. was open to all
because of its focus on humanity. More importantly, B.T. Tanner viewed Methodism as a
mechanism for social justice. He stated, “Methodism, in short, is an uprising of the religious
manhood of the Christian world against the slights and negligences, the oppressions and burdensome rituals of its religious teachers--it is a living protest against priestly injustice and
disobedience.”32 Methodism was a vehicle in which the oppressed could protest their oppression
racial or otherwise, and for the elder Tanner, Methodism was the denomination that had helped
and could help the African American the most.
10
B.T. Tanner vilified claims that the A.M.E. was open to only a black constituency. He
felt that the church welcomed any who had suffered oppression but furnished a safe haven for
African Americans. By titling the denomination “African,” the founders required that African
Americans be viewed “as men, not as slaves; as equals, not inferiors.”33 Thus, the elder Tanner’s
work lauded the positive accomplishments of the denomination while showing that the only way
African Americans could be treated as equals was to remove themselves from racist institutions.
In 1868, the A.M.E. General Conference elected B.T. Tanner as the editor of The Christian
Recorder, and he espoused his ideas on racial inequality and produce theological treatises on
race in the Bible. In 1869, Tanner published The Negro’s Origin and Is the Negro Cursed?, in
which he proclaimed that Canaan not Ham had been cursed. Thus, the African should have pride
in his/her blackness because they were not cursed but restricted from their potential. They had
“once excelled in science, philosophy, and the arts.”34 In 1888, B.T. Tanner became a bishop of
the A.M.E. Church, and he continued to produce theological scholarship, which was his love and
his true vocation. He published The Color of Solomon—What? (1895) and Theological Lectures
(1894), and both were discussions of the inclusion and exploration of race in the Bible. In The
Color of Solomon, he chided the United States as the only place where race was worthy of
consideration. “Color is everything in America,” he stated, yet in biblical times, they “were
altogether too sensible to concern themselves about it.”35 He contended that race did not matter
to those people in the Bible, and he pointed out that interpretation could often be faulty. In this
theological treatise, B.T. Tanner battled against the assumption of the whiteness of biblical
figures, and he argued that there was race in the Bible. He contradicted the idea of reading the
Bible like one would read an American newspaper, which meant the one should not assume a
certain racial classification. His assumption was that if race was not included in a description of
a person, then the person was white. The Bible and those who wrote it, maintained B.T. Tanner,
were not as consumed by racial qualifications as Americans were.
In Theological Lectures, B.T. Tanner again sought to understand discussions of race in
Bible, and this particular exploration led him to dismiss the notion of the “purity” of the races
except in the case of the Jews. Lectures had two purposes: to demonstrate that racial divisions
were arbitrary because of mixed ancestry of all races (excluding the Jews) and to show that
several biblical figures discussed Africans. The bishop proposed that several prophets including
Daniel noted the presence of Africans or Ethiopians, and Daniel paid them the same respect as he
did other peoples. The Ethiopian and the Egyptian were cousins, B.T. Tanner proclaimed, and
thus, there was a lineage of the Negro kings as well as Egyptian kings. A goal of this exegesis
was to indicate the place that the African had in the Bible, which contradicted white theologians
contention that there was not an African presence in the scriptures. B.T. Tanner affirmed his
race’s rightful place in the sacred text and in America, and thus, he provided one work after
another that pointed out inaccurate translations and references to Africans in the Bible, which
had been ignored. Along with his biblical scholarship, the bishop believed in the importance of
racial uplift, and he felt that he had divine sanction for his cause. The bishop supported
education because of its potential to uplift peoples of African descent and because it supplied the
race with more opportunities than African Americans could access. His biographer called B.T.
Tanner “a race man concerned with the progress of African Americans,” who “defended their
strength as well as criticized their vices.”36 He championed his race and chastised them, but
above all, he supported the uplift and education of his race. The Tanner household affirmed the
magnitude of education. Henry Tanner learned the importance of prayer from his father, and he
11
was spiritually impacted by his father’s intelligent study of biblical subjects, which lead to his
approach of portraying biblical subjects in his work.
Sarah, Henry’s mother, was also influential to her son, and her encounters with racism
affected the young Henry deeply. Unlike her husband, Sarah Elizabeth Miller Tanner was not
born free but into slavery in Virginia on May 18, 1840. She was the daughter of slave woman,
Elizabeth, who bore twelve children, six with the master of her plantation and six with Charles
Miller.37 Elizabeth was unable to acquire the freedom of her children, and thus, with the help of
the Underground Railroad and abolitionists, she obtained the means for their escape to
Pennsylvania.38 Sarah was quite the opposite of her fiery and opinionated husband. She was
known for her quiet reassurance and her teaching skills. Tanner’s parents were dedicated to
helping those marginalized by slavery attain education, and Sarah managed a neighborhood
school in her Pittsburgh home39 to provide a route to education for the disenfranchised.
Henry Tanner’s most profound memories of racism involved his mother, who he believed
had suffered enough under the institution of slavery, and thus, she should not have faced other
affronts to her humanity.40 The artist recalled an incident one winter in which his mother
attained a ride on a streetcar for herself and her small son. The streetcar only allowed whites, but
the weather was adverse, which made Sarah cover her face to procure the ride. It was a risky
choice, but she desperately wished to get her young son home. During the ride, a passenger
noticed that Sarah was African American, and she and Henry were removed from the train. In
one of his many “jottings,” Tanner recalled this incident and stated that he hoped God could
forgive the men for dishonoring his mother because this was an injustice that he could not
forgive.41 Henry Tanner’s hatred for racial prejudice was a direct result of the discrimination
that his mother faced. Sarah was his faithful supporter, and he did not want her to be insulted.
His mother was also the first to condone his career choice by giving him money for his first set
of paints. Between his two parents, fiery and reserved, Henry Tanner grew up in a loving,
spiritual, and supportive household.
With their emphasis of education and uplift, the Tanners made sure that Henry and his
siblings attained the best education possible. When the artist was thirteen, his family
permanently moved to Philadelphia, where he attended Robert Vaux Grammar School, which
was one of the most prestigious schools in the city. He graduated in 1877 as valedictorian of his
class and delivered an address on the importance of education. However, Tanner did not seek
further educational instruction. Instead he decided to pursue an art career, which was a choice he
had made years earlier. In 1872, on a stroll with his father in Fairmount Park, Henry O. Tanner
made a life-altering decision. The young Tanner noticed an artist, and he decided instantly that
he must become one. Tanner stated:
Like many children, I had drawn upon my slate to the loss of my lessons, or all over
fences to the detriment of the landscape, but never had it crossed my mind that I should
be an artist, nor had I ever wished to be. But, after seeing this artist…it was decided on
the spot by me at least, that I would be one, and I assure you it was no ordinary one I had
in mind.42
With his mind made up, Tanner became an artist. He began painting in any spare time that he
could manage outside of school. His schoolmates ridiculed his decision, and they would taunt
Tanner by saying, “An artist! [H]e is always poor and dies in a garret!”43 Their taunts, however,
had no lasting effect on the young Tanner. He was determined to become an artist, and he
12
visited local artist studios with the desire to become a pupil. This process was painful for
Tanner, who became aware the problem that his race posed for his fledging artistic career.
Tanner stated:
No man or boy to whom this country is the land of ‘equal chances’ can realize what
heartaches this question has caused me, and with what trepidation and nervousness I
made the round of the studios. The question was not, would the desired teacher have a
boy who knew nothing and had little money, but would he have me, or would he keep me
after he found out who I was?44
When he finally acquired an instructor, he paid for a lesson in which he was taught to draw
straight lines, which discouraged the young Tanner greatly. He quit the lessons but continued to
practice his art after school and during the summers when his family stayed in Atlantic City.
Soon, a local artist, Henry Price, in Philadelphia noticed his sketches. Price allowed Tanner to
apprentice with him for a year, but their study ended abruptly when visitors to Price’s studio
appreciated Tanner’s work over his own. The young artist had also been questioning Price about
entry to Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The culmination of the two events led to Price
removing Tanner’s belongings from his studio. Tanner made efforts to mend the relationship
and discover how he had “sinned,” but Price was finished with his patronage and lessons. Soon
after this event, the elder Tanner was concerned about Henry’s future and the stability of his
vocation of choice, and he attained Henry a job at a friend’s flourmill. Painting was still
Tanner’s obsession and his true vocation, and he would awaken early each morning to paint
before work at the mill. The flourmill proved to be dangerous for Tanner’s already frail health,
and his parents finally conceded for him to be an artist.
Tanner gained entrance to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1879, where he
studied intermittently under the guidance of Thomas Eakins. Eakins provided Tanner with a
realistic style that focused on the use of light, and according to the artist, it was the best advice
he had ever been offered. While the artist was working on a painting for Eakins’s class, the
instructor praised his study and urged him to complete it. However, Tanner became so afraid
that he would ruin the painting that he could not finish it. When Eakins viewed the painting, he
was disappointed. He told the fledgling artist, “Get it better, or get it worse. No middle ground
or compromise.”45 This advice made Tanner capable of “all sorts of things” because it inspired
him to never do a project halfway, and he continued to approach his art in this manner for the
rest of his life. However, his time at the Pennsylvania Academy was crucial not just because of
Eakins’s influence on Tanner’s life and art, but also because the artist remained relatively silent
on his time at the academy. It is likely that the artist did not discuss his experiences at the
academy due to racism that he confronted. Tanner was the first African American student to
attend the Pennsylvania Academy full-time.46
Another student at the academy, Joseph Pennell, who became a “great American
illustrator,” noted Tanner’s presence at the academy. In his memoirs in a chapter labeled “The
Coming of the Nigger,” Pennell described Tanner as “an octoroon, very well dressed, far better
than most of us…and he drew very well.”47 At first, Tanner went unnoticed and unharmed by
the students until he started “wanting things.” That led to an incident where several students
“crucified” Tanner by loosely tying his hands and feet to his own easel and left him in the middle
of Broad Street.48 Pennell remarked further “there has never been a great Negro or Jew artist in
the history of the world.”49 The illustrator wrote his memoirs during a time in which Tanner had
13
become acclaimed in Paris, and it could be likely that he wanted to injure the artist’s reputation.
What the artist possibly wanted is unknown, but from Pennell’s racist commentary, it is likely
that Tanner probably just desired respect from the other young artists at the academy. Due to his
racial heritage, Pennell and the other students felt that he did not deserve their respect. The artist
continued to study off and on at the academy from 1879 to 1885. During this time of study, he
also was a superintendent of Sunday school for the Morris Brown mission, but Tanner only
maintained this job for a year because it was taxing on his health and his painting.
In 1889, the artist moved to Atlanta and started a photography shop.50 Tanner was
determined to make his career choice profitable, and thus, he decided to create a shop that was a
combination of art and business. This venture was ultimately a failure, but Tanner had the good
fortune to meet Bishop Hartzell and his wife, his “patron saints,” who obtained a job for him at
Clark University and helped finance his first trip to Europe. The Hartzells convinced the artist to
do an exhibition of his work in Cincinnati for funding for a trip to Europe, and none of the works
sold. Tanner described the experience and said that so “I should not be completely disheartened,
my benefactors gave me a sum of money for my ‘entire collection.’”51 The couple wanted
Tanner to fulfill his dream of studying in Europe, and thus, they initially supplied a route for
funding. When the exhibition failed, they gave the artist the funding for his trip. In January of
1891, Tanner set sail for Rome with his first stop in London, then Paris, and finally Rome.
Rome, however, was not fortune’s fate for Henry Tanner. Once he entered Paris, he
“completely forgot” his plans to study in Rome, and instead, the artist decided to study in Paris at
the Académie Julian. Tanner described the academy as place where he had never seen “men
waste so much time” and that the “rooms full of tobacco smoke” made it nearly impossible to see
the model.52 The only problem for the artist at the Académie Julian was that academy held its
competitive exams (the concours) on Sundays. Due to his religious background, Tanner would
not compete on Sundays, and thus, he petitioned his classmates to help him get the competition
changed to Monday. His classmates were not morally offended, as he was, by the day of
competitions. He, then, approached the secretary of the school, who allowed the artist to turn his
sketch in on Monday to be judged with all the rest. The subject of this particular concour was
“The Deluge,” and Tanner’s sketch won one of the two prizes.53
At the Académie Julian, the artist had several teachers who instructed him and influenced
his work including Jean Joseph Benjamin-Constant, Jean-Paul Laurens, and Gérôme. These
teachers were known for not forcing their own artistic styles on their students, and BenjaminConstant was fond of Tanner’s paintings and sketches. Benjamin-Constant and Laurens were
both widely known for their genre, historical, and biblical scenes, which relied on the realism
and “sharp” colors of “French academic painting.”54 These two artists as well as Thomas Eakins
likely influenced Tanner’s artistic style that initially relied on realism. During his first two years
at the Académie Julian, Tanner worked long hours on his paintings and saved his money for
tuition instead of food. Unfortunately, this led to a lack of nutrition that made him more
susceptible to illness. Thus, in his second year in France, he became ill with typhoid fever and
returned to America to recuperate.55 During his recovery in America, he gave a speech at The
Chicago Congress on Africa at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. His speech was on
the condition of Negro painters and sculptors, and he expounded that Negro artists possessed the
ability and talent for competition with their white counterparts.56 The artist was concerned with
the status of African American artists as well as African Americans in general, and at this point,
he painted his two black genre paintings, The Banjo Lesson (1893) and The Thankful Poor
(1894). Both works portray African Americans with a dignity and sympathy that previous
14
depictions and caricatures of the race ignored. This was a period of racial awareness for Tanner,
and many thought that finally there was a Negro artist that could and would portray their race
with the sympathy they deserved. W.S. Scarborough stated many had “hoped, too, that the
treatment of race subjects by him would serve to counterbalance” the stereotypes that have made
“the race only a laughing stock subject for those artists who see nothing in it but…the absurd and
grotesque.”57 However, the artist did not live up to these expectations because after 1894, he
never painted black subjects again. He did submit The Banjo Lesson to the Salon of 1894, and it
was accepted.
As soon as he was feeling well, Tanner returned to the Académie Julian and continued on
with his career. For Tanner, Paris was a place where he could escape the racial prejudice that he
faced in America. Of Paris, Tanner wrote, that he “never suffered anything on account of his
color.”58 In this European society, the artist could move freely, and race was not a barrier nor
was it the defining characteristic of his art in France.59 Paris and most of Europe provided
Tanner freedom from “baleful prejudice” that he has faced in America.
On his return, he initially painted more genre scenes of the peasants of Brittany in
France, which contained similar themes to The Banjo Lesson like education of the youth by
elders.60 In 1895, there was a shift in his career, and the artist became a painter of religious
scenes. Why Tanner chose religious themes rather than his previous genre scenes is a question
that has provoked much scholarly inquiry. Did he choose to paint religious themes because of
his religious background? Or was he choosing like many other artists to “lift” his “sight to loftier
themes by which an artist’s reputation was often judged?”61 Whatever the reason may be, which
will be explored in the next chapter, the artist decided on different themes than he previously
tackled. He painted Daniel and the Lion’s Den (1895) and exhibited at the Salon of 1896. At
the age of 37, Henry Ossawa Tanner received an honorable mention for Daniel, which was his
first honor as a painter, and it inspired him. Tanner said in reference to this event, “So it was this
first little ‘mention honorable’ [that] gave me a courage and a power for hard work…this little
honor did spur me on to greater efforts, and these efforts were not completely unsuccessful.”62
Daniel caused the artist’s name to be recognizable, but his next painting, The Resurrection of
Lazarus (1897), made Henry Tanner a painter of great standing. Benjamin-Constant liked the
painting so much that he showed it to one of his sons, which was a high compliment that
flattered the artist.63 This work also furnished Tanner with a new patron, Rodman Wannamaker,
who was so influenced by the religious feeling apparent in Lazarus that he funded a trip to
Palestine and Jerusalem for the artist. The painting won a third-class medal and was purchased
by the French government, which placed it in the Luxembourg Gallery.
In 1898, the artist had paintings in demand, a new painting The Annunciation in the salon,
and he met the love of his life, Jessie Macauley Olssen. Olssen was younger than Tanner by
sixteen years, and she was singer originally from San Francisco. She was also white. He and
Olssen were married in London on December 14, 1899. Though their marriage may seem
strange because of Tanner’s background, a biographer of Tanner, Marcia Matthews, did not think
it was unusual. Matthews proposed that Tanner had always believed that race was a false barrier
and in “Jessie Olssen, he found a woman who shared his views about race.”64 The interracial
marriage made returning to the U.S. much harder for the artist and his wife. Also in 1899,
Tanner won the Lippincott Prize, the prize awarded to the best painting by an American artist,
from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for Christ and Nicodemus. This prize was the
artist’s first recognition in America. The period from 1900 to 1914 was a time of happiness for
Tanner professionally and personally. He had finally achieved much deserved recognition for
15
his paintings, and he married a woman who brought him happiness, support, and a son. Jesse
Ossawa Tanner was born in 1903, and Henry passed on the middle name that represented hope
and struggle to his parents to his own son. Tanner knew the significance of “Ossawa” and
desired his son to be cognizant of his cultural heritage.
During this time period, he continued to paint religious themes, which meant he often
received criticism for not continuing with black genre paintings. He still faced the label of
Negro artist by the U.S. newspapers. One art critic described his work’s “religious fervor” as a
product of Tanner’s “certain proportion of Negro blood.”65 An anonymous writer proposed that
the artist’s public recognition in the U.S. had been marred by publications that labeled him the
“greatest [N]egro painter” because they affronted “his art in the exploitation of race.”66 The
French presses, on the other hand, classified the artist as an American.67 As mentioned earlier,
Tanner preferred to be classified as an American instead of a Negro, and he was annoyed by the
merit of his art being ignored in favor of his racial heritage. Despite importance of the artist’s
race to the press, they still noted that Tanner was an exceptional artist. In one article, he was
described as “one of the greatest artists whom America has produced.”68
However, in 1914, Tanner’s happiness was shattered with the advent of World War I.
The Tanners were forced to leave their home in Etaples, Pas-de-Calais, which was located in the
Normandy region of France,69 and flee to England. A more personal loss for the artist occurred
this year when his mother, Sarah, died, and he was unable to return the U.S. for her funeral. In
1916, he and his wife returned to France to help with relief work, and the artist, due to the stress
of the war, sank into depression over his choice of vocation. During this time period, Tanner
returned to themes in his painting that had previously brought him solace, such as the good
shepherd and Daniel. In 1917, the artist convinced the American Red Cross to provide vegetable
gardens near the hospitals in France. In 1918, Tanner received permission for his gardens, and
he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Department of Information and as Assistant Director
of the Farm and Garden service for the American Red Cross.70 Working with the Red Cross was
a mixed blessing for Tanner, who was able to help with the war effort at the same time that he
realized racism was still a real facet of American life. The artist witnessed the segregation of
black troops and heard the racist comments of white officers. The America that Tanner loved
still enforced strict racial barriers, and thus, the artist could not bring himself to return.
During the period of 1919 to 1929, Tanner continued to submit his work to exhibitions,
and in 1923, he was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, which was the highest honor
France would bestow upon a foreign artist. However, the time period was also one of loss for the
artist. His father, Bishop Tanner, died in 1923, and again, Tanner was unable to attend the
funeral. The most devastating loss occurred two years later when his wife, Jessie, succumbed to
complications of pleurisy at the age of 48. Jessie and Henry had been married 25 years. Only a
year after that Tanner’s son, Jesse, with frail nerves like his father suffered a nervous breakdown
that put him in and out of hospitals for the next three years.71 Amidst the sorrow, Mother Bethel
A.M.E commissioned Tanner, in 1924, to provide a bronze tablet with busts of Richard and
Sarah Allen along with the names of all the bishops. Later, the church notified Tanner that they
would not pay for the artwork, and Tanner filed a lawsuit against Mother Bethel. This event
caused the artist to feel neglected by “his people.” In a 1927 letter to Raymond Alexander, the
husband of his niece, Sadie, Tanner lamented, “What would I have amounted too[sic] if I had
had to depend upon my own people…I do not know.”72 After two years, the lawsuit was settled
out of court for less than half the price of the original contract. Race, it seemed, would always be
a point of contention for Tanner. He was defined by his race, and yet, he felt that “his own
16
people” did not support him. Art, however, sustained Henry O. Tanner. Painting was the
vocation that brought him happiness, and he continued to paint, often returning to figures he
admired, until his death in May of 1937.
The “dean of American painters”73 died alone in his home in Trepied at the age of 77.
His art defined his life and created expectations and burdens that he never imagined possible. In
death, Tanner still did not avoid the classification of his art and life by his race. One headline
proclaimed, “Henry Tanner, 77, Dies in Paris; Was American Negro Painter.”74 Race, it
appeared, would always be a factor in describing Henry Tanner. His art, however, cannot be
described as only racial. Rather, it must be considered together with his religious background
and his cultural heritage. One of his biographers, Marcus Bruce, proposed that each painting of
Tanner’s was an autobiography “and, more importantly, his Bible. Each is a testament, a Biblelike chronicle of the struggles, triumph, failures, resources and revelations of an AfricanAmerican painter living and working in America and France.”75 The next chapter will explore
the art of Henry Ossawa Tanner and the reflection of his life, racial and religious, in his art.
17
CHAPTER 2: HENRY OSSAWA TANNER, WORK
Art is often categorized as a reflection of life, an imitation of the artist’s
experiences. The paintings of Henry Osssawa Tanner often have been described as vignettes of
his life, glimpses of his experiences. Thus, previous scholars of Tanner’s art and life have two
theses that involve what inspired the artist’s work. The first is that Tanner’s paintings, and
particularly his religious narratives, reflect his religious upbringing and his A.M.E. background.
Scholars Marcus Bruce and Kristin Schwain noted the importance of religion in Tanner’s life and
work. Bruce emphasized Tanner’s spirituality and mysticism, and Schwain claimed that the
artist was representing the visual rhetoric of his denomination, the A.M.E. The second thesis is
that the artist could not escape his cultural heritage, which means that race was somehow implicit
in his art. Dewey F. Mosby is the foremost scholar of this thesis, and he proposed the
importance of artist’s racial heritage and the necessity to study the influence of this heritage on
the artist’s work. He addressed critics who wanted Tanner to be viewed “simply as an artist”
without considering race by pointing out that race could not be avoided while discussing the
artist because “Tanner was inspired in his art by his cultural heritage.”76 With these two
influences on Tanner’s art, scholars generally focused on one or the other of these influences or
identities and prioritized cultural heritage before religious experience, or vice versa, the religious
before the racial.
Previous criticism had simplified the artist’s motivations for his themes and did not admit
that possibly both religion and race affected the artist’s method and choice of themes for his
paintings. It appears that both religion and race inform the work of Tanner because both
identities were intertwined in his life. Tanner was an African American yet he had deeply
religious convictions that pervaded his thinking. It appears difficult, if not impossible, to
examine one identity without reference to the other in his art. Henry Tanner was a complex man
and a complex artist, and thus, to separate or prioritize these identities is not possible because
they were both facets of a life of a human being. Moreover, it appeared that with his A.M.E.
upbringing that these identities were interconnected and affected early on how the artist viewed
the world. In this chapter, I will explore the dynamic between religion and race in the artist’s
life and work. Accordingly, it is necessary to examine how both influences, religion and race,
molded Henry Ossawa Tanner. Then, I will inspect several of Tanner’s works, religious and
black genre, and their themes. By examining these works, I will show how religion and race
inform his decision or choice of themes, and what the commingling of these identities
demonstrate about the dialectic nature of the relationship between religion and race in the art as
well as the life of Henry Tanner. It is important to note that the choice of themes, not necessarily
the subjects of his paintings, is where the interaction of race and religion lies contrary to earlier
theories that proposed that his work represented race.
First, as mentioned earlier, Tanner was raised in a religious and intellectual household.
His father, B.T. Tanner, began as an itinerant minister in the A.M.E. and eventually became
responsible for several of their journals including The Christian Recorder, and he was elected as
a bishop. Bishop Tanner, above all, was a rigorous theologian, who produced many works on
race in the Bible in order to discover the place of Africans in the Christian faith. In his Apology
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for African Methodism, he explored the founding of the A.M.E. and its importance to African
Americans. Bishop Tanner believed that the A.M.E. was founded to protest the treatment of
African Americans in American society and to protest the racism that was present in white
denominations. At first, the Methodist Episcopal Church was inclusive of blacks because it was
a small denomination, but as its membership and social status increased, the “Negro became
contemptible in its eyes—this contempt culminated in such treatment of the colored members, as
none but men robbed on true manhood could endure.”77 The formation of the separate
denomination occurred after Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others were ordered to their
seats at the back of St. George’s Methodist Church in 1792.78 When they did not comply, they
were forcibly removed from the white section of a Methodist church amidst their prayers.
Racism and hypocrisy, for Allen and others, should not be a part of Christianity as they
understood it from their study of the Bible, especially Jesus’s teachings. Allen’s initial goal was
not to create a separate church severed from Methodism but just an institution where African
Americans could worship without restrictions. Methodism, to Allen, was more than a route to
salvation because it “provided a formula by which blacks could lift themselves up from their
impoverished, degraded state” imposed by slavery.79 Under leaders like Allen, Daniel Coker,
and eventually Daniel Payne, the A.M.E. churches became centers of racial solidarity and
focused on the need for racial equality for African Americans to secure their rightful place in
American society.
Thus, the purpose of the A.M.E was to affirm the humanity of African Americans and to
assert the right to an elevated position for the race in American life and culture. The institution
was a safe haven for those who faced racial injustice in the “outside” world because they would
no longer confront oppression in the religious sphere. Bishop Tanner proposed that the A.M.E.
existed to fight the inequality that African Americans faced within white denominations. The
denomination became a place for African Americans to better themselves and be free of
restrictions imposed on them by whites. The connection between cultural heritage and religion
was forged because the denomination was born out of frustration of racial inequality in culture as
well as religion. Religion enlightened the founders’ views on race, and race was a barrier for
African Americans in white denominations, and in essence, to religion. Thus, race and religion
informed and complicated ideas about each other early on in the history of the A.M.E. The
denomination was an outlet for African American frustration at injustice, a mouthpiece for social
justice, a route to education, and a source of encouragement for the capabilities of the race.
W.E.B. Du Bois considered the A.M.E. the “greatest voluntary organization” of African
Americans in the world80 because this denomination was demonstrative of the potential of
African Americans for self-government, education, and organization. The A.M.E. had intelligent
and educated clergy, who emphasized the need for education as a path to opportunity and
betterment in American society, which led the organization to build many educational
institutions, collegiate as well as religious, for African Americans. Education was of the utmost
importance to Bishop Daniel Payne, a friend and mentor of Bishop Tanner and a patron of Henry
Tanner. Payne stated, “O ignorance! O disunion! Ye did curse and destroy Carthage! Ye can
also curse and destroy the A.M.E. Church! Not the Christian Church! No; never! because that is
for humanity; but the A.M.E. church, because that is for the race.”81 In Payne’s mind,
Christianity was in no danger of being damaged because of its centrality to humanity, but the
A.M.E. was in more fragile position because of its connection with race. Payne believed the way
for the church to prosper, survive, and continue to help the race was through education.
Education was a method to lift African Americans from conditions of illiteracy and poverty to a
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higher status. In 1845 at the A.M.E.’s Baltimore Conference, several ministers developed a
preamble and resolutions on the subject of education for the denomination. The preamble stated:
The sacred cause of education is of such vital importance to the interests of the Church in
particular, and to the world in general, that instead of being contented with what little we
have done, we feel it our duty to make new and greater efforts to advance its cause
among us in such a way, as will result in a general diffusion of its blessings among our
benighted race.82
Education was crucial to African American advancement because it was the gateway to racial
uplift. Bishop Tanner also noted the importance of education as an outlet for racial uplift, and he
understood the “psychological value” of the concept to encourage African Americans to better
themselves but also to show them that they had the potential to achieve greatness. His
biographer noted that Bishop Tanner’s writings were demonstrative to other people of color that
they were capable of intellectual feats because all people, no matter what race, had this ability.83
It is noteworthy the A.M.E.’s emphasis on education and racial uplift as methods for securing a
legitimate place for African Americans in society, and the relationship between religion and race
was forged to fight racism, to obtain a higher social status, and to provide solace to those
marginalized by a racist American society.
Thus, the denomination, in its doctrine and theology, associated religion with race
because religion provided the lens to see injustice and the method to fight the racial injustice that
African Americans faced in America. Religion was not free of racism as Allen and Jones
“roughly” discovered, and thus, religion in the A.M.E. could not be free of race. His A.M.E.
background molded and influenced Henry Tanner. It provided the lens through which he viewed
the world that was not strictly religious but contained racial elements as well, and the connection
between religion and race informed his identity and his work. Tanner drew from this religious
background the themes that he found relevant to his life and to the lives of others. Thus, this
inspiration from his religious background infused his choice of themes with religion and race,
which does not mean the race is implicit in the work itself. Race was not an obvious message in
Tanner’s works nor was it substantiated in the depiction of the religious narrative. The
commingling of religion and race molded his decision to paint religious themes but did not
guarantee the presence of race in his art. Despite the blending of religion and race inherent in his
religious upbringing, the artist had conflicting emotions about racial identification.
Tanner’s feelings about his racial identity could be categorized as ambivalent. The artist
rebuked the label of Negro artist and was annoyed by it at the same time that he provided money
to the National Association of Colored People (NAACP). In his later years in France, Tanner
extended help and guidance to young African American artists, but he did not enjoy returning
home because of the prevalence of racism. His father was an activist for the race, who
demanded social justice and equality, but the artist was not involved in the same type of
activism. His cultural heritage was complicated with three different veins, African, Native
American, and Anglo-American ancestries, but art critics insisted his African ancestry was the
reason for his artistic talent and choice of themes. After reading a draft of an article on his life
and work, the artist took offense at the author’s discussion of his racial heritage and its impact on
his art. Tanner responded in a letter to the author, Eunice Tietjens:
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Now am I a Negro? Does not 3/4 of the English blood in my veins which when it flowed
in “pure” Anglo-Saxon veins and which has done in the past effective and distinguished
work—does this not count for anything? Does the 1/4 or 1/8 of “pure” Negro blood
count for all? I believe it (the Negro blood) counts and counts to my advantage—though
it has caused me at times a life of great humiliation and great sorrow…And that it is the
source of my talents (if I have any) I do not believe, any more than I believe all errors
[come] from my English ancestors?84
Obviously, the artist was pained by the constant identification as a Negro artist and the
assumption that his talent came from his racial experiences. The artist like his father preferred to
be referred to as “American” because, unlike the appellation “Negro,” it was not a designation
that had been imposed on African Americans.85 He had experienced the benefits and the painful
barriers that were attached to the term. Newspaper articles were preoccupied with identifying
Tanner as a Negro artist and usually provided a physical description of the artist as well. An
article in Alexander’s Magazine described the artist as having “little or no trace nor suggestion of
African ancestry” instead he appeared “Latin…rather than types of tropical origin.”86 Another
critic stated, “Altho[ugh] his paintings exhibit that full-blooded sense of rhythm and color which
gives peculiar charm to the art productions of his race, Tanner’s work is above all racial
distinctions.”87 The author attempted to remove the artist from racial stereotyping while
reinforcing ideas that Tanner’s art was a product of his African heritage. The artist was referred
to as above racial distinctions because he was identified as racial, which justified his artistic
ability. Obviously, the journalists were aware of the barriers that race caused for the artist.
Leading black intellectual, Booker T. Washington, also commented on the artist’s affiliation with
his race from a different position. Washington stated, “Tanner is proud of his race. He feels
deeply representative of his people he is on trial to establish their right to be taken seriously in
the world of art.”88 Tanner was proud of his race, but Washington’s assertion that the artist
thought of himself as representative of the race might be more hope than fact. Washington
wanted the artist to be representative of the race, and whether Tanner wanted the responsibility
or burden was not as likely. A biographer of the artist asserted that Washington’s statements
“were exaggerated” because Tanner never disclaimed his heritage but considered it “incidental”
to his talents.89 However, the artist himself contributed to the confusion and ambivalence of his
stance on racial matters because of paintings he created at the beginning of his career.
Early in his career, Tanner painted at least four black genre paintings, and he discussed
the role of the Negro artist at the African Congress at the World’s Columbian Exposition in
1893. This period of his life appeared to be a turning point in which the artist developed a new
racial consciousness and desired to be an activist for the race with a brush and canvas instead of
his father’s methods of theology and journalism. He demonstrated his newfound activism in a
speech at the African Congress, in which he proclaimed Negro artists could compete with white
artists. Though the text of the speech has been lost, Tanner’s assertion was that African
Americans were just as capable as their white counterparts and could be successful in the arts.90
Tanner was also aware of the importance of representation of African Americans, a concern
Alain Locke would voice years later, and the power that it could wield to change society’s
perception.
During this period of racial consciousness, the artist painted black genre paintings that
portrayed African Americans in a sympathetic and dignified way, and The Banjo Lesson and The
Thankful Poor both focused on the educating of the young by elders that harkened back to the
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Tanner household’s emphasis on education that was directly influenced by the A.M.E.’s
dedication to the same cause, which was a marked difference from previous genre paintings of
African Americans. Previous depictions of African Americans confined them to a childlike stage
and “relegated African Americans to the peripheries of American life, symbolically rationalizing
the color bar.”91 These construed images centered on “humorous” depictions of African
Americans often with exaggerated physical features and involved music, farm work, and
minstrelsy. Tanner’s images, instead, represented the quiet dignity of African Americans with an
emphasis on the elders teaching the young, which “subverted the original social intention of
genre”92 to poke fun at those who were inferior because his works emphasized the common
humanity that all races shared that lifted the status of his own people. Thus, these black genre
scenes led many African Americans to hope that finally an African American artist had arrived
that would promote and uplift the race through painting; however, this was not to be. Tanner did
not paint black genre scenes again after 1894. As abruptly as he started, he moved on to new
religious themes in his work.
Another factor that created confusion over the artist’s position toward his racial heritage
was his annoyance at the lack of support he received from his race. The majority of Tanner’s
patrons, the Hartzells, Robert C. Ogden, R. Wannamaker, were white, and the artist had a
difficulties when attempting to sell his work to African Americans. W.E.B. Du Bois recalled a
discussion in Paris with Tanner, and the artist’s “little complaint” was that he had “‘never…been
able to sell one” of his paintings “to a colored man.”93 Du Bois justified the lack of support to
the artist by claiming that African Americans did not have the money to purchased paintings or
an appreciation of art.94 Yet Du Bois felt guilt because of the feebleness of his excuses, but he
believed that the race would soon support its artisans. Tanner was hurt by the lack of support of
his own people, who continued to claim him as a representative of the race but did not provide
monetary assistance or the emotional reassurance that he required. In 1924, it appeared that
finally his church and his people would maintain the artist. Mother Bethel A.M.E commissioned
a bronze tablet with a bust of Richard Allen and his wife and the engraved names of all the
A.M.E. bishops, which included Tanner’s father. Unfortunately, the arrangement turned sour
with a change in leadership of the church, and the artist had to file suit against the church to
receive payment.
The event caused Tanner to be bitter towards his “own people,” and he lamented about
what his career would have become if he “had had to depend upon his own people—I do not
know.”95 Thus, it is hard to determine how Tanner truly felt about his racial heritage. At certain
points of his life and career, he was proud of his race and painted dignified works to lift imagery
of African Americans above stereotypes. Yet he also felt that his racial heritage was a burden
and a barrier, and he lacked support from his “own people.” His life and career were marked by
racial ambivalence, but his cultural heritage was a part of him and thus, effected his art. His
religious background also played a role in the choice of themes for his paintings, and his
religious tradition, the A.M.E., with its blending of the religious and the racial had a profound
effect on the way Tanner viewed the world and created his art. His work, however, provided its
own swell of confusion because of his range of themes.
Henry Tanner’s art included animal and marine paintings, American landscapes,
seascapes, landscapes of the “Orient” such as Palestine, genre scenes of Brittany peasants, black
genre, and religious paintings. Scholars are divided on what they consider his most important
works because of sheer variety of themes. As mentioned earlier, the confusion lies in how to
classify the artist due to his somewhat eclectic subjects. His religious paintings initially were
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considered the most representative of his work because they comprise the vast majority of his
œuvre, and these paintings were responsible for the artist’s international acclaim. In the past ten
years, other scholars. including Albert Boime and Judith Wilson, have drawn attention to the
importance of his black genre paintings in canon of American art as contradictions to previous
genre representations of African Americans.96 Both themes accent the importance of Tanner as
American artist, and these themes reflect his religious and racial background because of the
narratives and scenes that he chose to portray. With his religious paintings, Tanner also returned
to certain narratives again and again painting new versions with different approaches to the
subject matter as his life progressed. His religious paintings reflected his own faith and the
domesticity of Christianity. His black genre and religious paintings arguably portrayed the
dialectic between religion and race that engrossed Tanner’s life because of their racial subject
matter that focused on the central ideas of the A.M.E.
His religious paintings, which rely on themes of isolation, martyrdom, resurrection,
flight, and hope, demonstrate that religion and race inform his choice of themes, and thus, race
was not implicit in his works but implicit in his decision on the subject matter for his works.
This occurred because of Tanner’s A.M.E. background in which religion and race were in a
dialectical relationship, which means each informed the experience of the other, as if these
identities were in conversation. Race and religion were interwoven in the history of the
denomination, and this interconnectedness affected the method through which the artist viewed
the world. These identities often connected in the understanding of biblical narratives because
certain themes and figures had resonance with the African American community. His black
genre paintings also reflect tenets of the A.M.E. by expressing the importance of education
because they were created as a counter image to stereotypes of African Americans. These
paintings became a form of racial uplift. Education and racial uplift were both central to the
A.M.E. as an organization and in their doctrine. I will examine two of Tanner’s African
American genre paintings and discuss the obvious portrayal of race and the more subtle themes
that are influenced by the A.M.E.’s dedication to education and racial uplift. Then, I will explore
his shift to biblical scenes and a few religious paintings to demonstrate that race was not implicit
in the art themes. Instead, race was implicit in Tanner’s choice of themes because the blending
of race and religion in his religious upbringing had an impact on the way he viewed the world
and created his art. This commingling of race and religion was at the root of his decision to
depict certain biblical narratives but did not mean that there was an inherent racial message in his
works.
In the 1890’s, the artist had a period of renewed racial consciousness, which inspired him
to paint several black genre paintings that expressed the importance of education and became
tools for racial uplift. These black genre paintings reflected the relationship between race and
religion in the A.M.E. church. The A.M.E. furnished Tanner with the lens to view and
understand his world, and thus, its teachings and tenets, specifically their focus on education and
racial uplift, shaped the artist’s life. The denomination appears to be the primary influence of his
art because of his experiences within the A.M.E. and centrality of its tenets to his life. This
influence led Tanner to enlighten his black genre themes with ideas of uplift and education to
counteract previous images of African Americans. Two of Tanner’s black genre paintings, The
Banjo Lesson (fig.1) and The Thankful Poor (fig. 2), reflected the dialectical conversation of
religion and race in Tanner’s life because both espoused tenets of the A.M.E., which where
specifically aimed at improving the status of the African American in American culture. Both
works represented the education of the young by the old and the universal experience and
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humanness of this connection. They were also forms of racial uplift because they contradict
previous images of African Americans in the fine arts and popular culture. The artist carefully
depicted his figures with the much needed dignity and sympathy that they deserved and that
previous images lacked.
The Banjo Lesson, originally entitled The First Lesson, depicted an elderly African
American man teaching a young boy how to play the banjo. Both figures were intently focused
on the lesson, and they would not notice spectators. The man held the strings on the upper part
of the banjo while the boy seated on his knee plucked the strings. The man watched closely to
check the boy’s accuracy as the boy concentrated on his own progress. Their surroundings were
sparse, and their clothing appeared worn but not in “tatters and patches” that were found in
“sentimental or derogatory” images of African Americans in the 19th century.97 Man and boy
were both portrayed with dignity and sympathy, and the viewer cannot help but notice the
humanity and familiarity of the man and boy, parent and child, as they were engaged and enrapt
in the educational process. This painting was revolutionary because “the theme is not the
African-American as an object of white entertainment but as the subject of black education.”98
Portraying African Americans with dignity was a direct affront to previous stereotypes of the
race, images that supported white superiority and black inferiority, which were meant to ridicule
and demean the group as a whole. Tanner’s work “subverted” previous genre paintings of
African Americans because he provided his figures with dignity that was lacking in these other
genre forms. This painting acted as a form of racial uplift because its depictions of African
Americans emphasized their inherent dignity and their connection to the rest of humanity.
Tanner showed that African Americans had familial relationships, were teachers and mentors,
and had dignity that could not be ignored. The artist purposely contradicted previous visions of
the race and used his paintings as a tool against racist imagery. The painting’s central theme was
education, which was likely influenced by the importance of education in Tanner’s household as
well as his denomination, the A.M.E. Bishop Daniel Payne of the A.M.E, a friend and mentor of
Bishop Tanner and a patron of the artist, repeatedly stressed the importance of education as a
gateway of opportunity for African Americans. The artist’s parents gave each of their children
access to education because it provided them with opportunities that would not have otherwise
existed. Payne, as mentioned earlier, saw education as the key to elevating the race. He
promoted educated ministers with a hope that these ministers would educate the masses, which
would be demonstrative of potential of African Americans and force “enemies of the race” to
recognize their potential.99 Tanner’s painting showed that African Americans had the capacity to
teach and to learn contrary to the views of some whites, and thus, this representation was a form
of racial uplift with its contradictions of stereotypes and its focus on education.
In The Thankful Poor, the artist once again captured the bond between young and old as a
man and young boy pray before a meal. It is obvious to the viewer that the figures were poor
and were about to partake in a scant meal, but Tanner demonstrated their dignity, grace, and
thankfulness to God despite what little they have. This painting, like The Banjo Lesson,
counteracted previous stereotypes of African Americans because religious scenes were usually
depicted as wild and ecstatic instead of the solemn and peaceful tone of this work. Both figures
folded their hands in prayer and “are shown as devout and sober Christians, a role almost never
seen in popular representations, which generally mock African-American religious practice as a
throwback to tribal ritual or fanatical superstition.”100 Once again, Tanner could have been
influenced by Payne, who was against the emotional religious response of some African
Americans and preferred a more solemn, reflective response.101 The artist managed to illustrate
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the often-poor conditions of African American life without demeaning his subjects because of
his tender depiction of their reverence of God that exuded the figures’ humanity. In a note
attached to his The Thankful Poor for the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, Tanner commented
on his role and his own expectations for his art to contradict artistic stereotypes of African
Americans. Tanner stated:
Since his return from Europe he [Tanner] has painted mostly Negro subjects, he feels
drawn to such subjects on account if the newness of the field and because of the desire to
represent the serious, and pathetic side of life among them, and it is his thought that other
things being equal, he who has the most sympathy with his subjects will obtain the best
results. To his mind many of the artists who have represented Negro life have only seen
the comic, the ludicrous side of it, and have lacked the sympathy with and appreciation
for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior.102
The artist wanted to represent his race to the best of his ability to negate previous “comic” and
“ludicrous” stereotypes that marred the image of African Americans. He desired his painting to
be agents of uplift by demonstrating the serious side of African American life. Judith Wilson
noted that Tanner, with his choice of subject matter in these two black genre paintings “took
aim” at two of the most well-known assumptions of African Americans, which were that
“musical gifts were innate” and incomparable with white achievements and that their piety was
an outshoot of their superstitious African ancestry and was solely based on emotion.103 By
tackling these assumptions, Tanner’s paintings became a powerful tool to represent the potential
of African Americans while invalidating prevalent stereotypes. These paintings represented
racial uplift in every sense of its application by the A.M.E.
After the creation of The Thankful Poor, Tanner never created another black genre
painting, and he turned to religious paintings. His new artistic motif of biblical scenes befuddled
admirers and critics alike. A friend of the Tanner family noted that the shift was somewhat
inevitable because his “early home atmosphere had always been strongly religious, neither was it
was generally known that it has long been the wish of his father’s heart that his son should paint
[b]iblical subjects.”104 The artist was seen as finally making his “art serve religion”105 as his
father hoped he would. This sentiment was often echoed as the reasoning for this shift, and one
scholar proposed that along with his father’s influence that Tanner was “intent upon dealing with
humanitarian themes” and painting religion was “a natural extension of his devout nature.”106
Another scholar explored the benefit of creating religious paintings for the artist’s career to
establish his reputation as a painter. A biographer of Tanner noted the complexity of the
situation the artist found himself in because if he created paintings of African Americans, “he
found himself typecast and isolated as a Negro artist” with his paintings “segregated to the Negro
section of exhibitions.”107 At the same time, if he attempted to exhibit his work without
reference to race, “he lost, or so it appeared, the opportunity to make a statement about the social
and political plight of African Americans.”108 The motives for this shift of painting were more
than likely a combination of the artist’s need to rid himself of the social burden of being a race
painter and his desire to “review the richness of his religious faith—its profound role in helping
his people and its universal character.”109 Tanner voiced his own opinion of his stylistic shift.
He stated:
It is not by accident that I have chosen to be a religious painter. I have no doubt of an
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inheritance of religious feeling, and for this I am glad, but I have also decided and I hope
an intelligent religious faith not due to inheritance but my own conviction. I believe my
religion. I have chosen the character of my art because it conveys my message and tells
what I want to tell my own generation and leave to the future.110
He believed that he did inherit his father’s religious feeling and denominational background, but
it was his own religious conviction that led him into the arena of religious painting. The artist
was convinced of the importance of his new themes because they were an outpouring of his
religious faith, and he conveyed his faith along with a message of universal humanity to his
viewers. Religion was crucial to Tanner, and it was the time for him to express its magnitude.
Henry Tanner’s religious paintings in themselves encompass a multitude of themes.
Tanner painted biblical figures, from Daniel to Jesus to Mary to Salome, and events including
resurrection, flight, and the annunciation. Interestingly, several of Tanner’s religious paintings
have been identified as representing not only biblical narratives but also having a racial context
as well. In 1908, W.S. Scarborough suggested two of Tanner’s paintings could express race.
He commented, “Of this picture [Lazarus] there could be said what was said of ‘Daniel’—‘there
was race in it,’ a quality that one critic avers to be new to Biblical painting. Be that as it may,
Mr. Tanner studied to put ‘race in it.’”111 The two paintings were Daniel and the Lion’s Den
(1895) and Resurrection of Lazarus (1897), and they were two of the most well known of
Tanner’s religious paintings, and both won the artist recognition as well as awards in the French
Salons and formed his reputation as an artist. W.H. Burgess III agreed with Scarborough and
stated that the artist went beyond illustrating race. Burgess stated:
[Tanner] fervently believed that the Biblical myths could illustrate the struggles and the
hopes of Black Americans. From the standpoint of technique one can see the influence of
Eakins and the Impressionists in his earlier works, but as Tanner’s more mature style
develops we sense a spiritualism of Black feeling pervading his later works”112
Whether Burgess was correct in assessing Tanner’s use of biblical myth as an expression of the
experiences of African Americans is not completely clear. Burgess sensed the “spiritualism of
Black feeling” in Tanner’s work, but the artist did not describe this desire or inspiration for his
work in any of his own commentary. Scarborough noted the importance of Tanner to the race
and explained why the race “claimed” the artist because he was an example that “color is no
barrier to progress.”113
The race claimed Tanner and his triumphs, and scholars have claimed Scarborough,
Burgess, and Booker T. Washington’s affirmations of the racial in his art as crucial to
understanding his art. Several paintings, such as Daniel and Lion’s Den, Resurrection of
Lazarus, and Christ and Nicodemus (1899), have been examined for their racial subtexts with the
argument that Tanner employed the religious to communicate the racial in his work, which
means the narratives the artist chose had resonance with the African American community. The
argument was that Tanner painted the biblical themes that occurred in the Christian theology of
African American denominations, and these themes connected to recognizable events of African
American history. The importance of biblical narratives to African Americans and how these
narratives shape their worldview was how the religious experience became a symbol for the
African American experience. Theologian Vincent Wimbush argued that there was an
interesting, engaging relationship between African Americans and the Bible. He wrote:
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those who call themselves African Americans became a people not exclusively so but to a
great degree through creative identification with and creative engagement of the Bible.
The latter was compelling because it contained the stories of those whose experiences of
the uprooted, un-homely Africans.114
Wimbush’s argument was that African Americans used the Bible to identify themselves and to
understand their experiences when they were removed from their homes and cultures with the
advent of slavery. The Bible became a tool to understand and interpret every day life, and thus,
many biblical themes had religious and racial contexts for African Americans such as ideas of
struggle, exodus, and martyrdom. Wimbush suggested even further that often African
Americans, due to their experiences of being marginalized in their history as well as in their
everyday lives, viewed the Bible was seen as a “mirror” of their experiences and they saw “in it
the privileging of all those who like themselves” were “the humiliated, the outcasts and the
powerless.”115 He pointed out that African Americans also looked for universal themes that
could benefit and speak to all humanity. This theologian demonstrated a need to “read darkness”
in the Bible because this reading is a process of creative engagement with the Bible for African
Americans, which is applicable to understanding the A.M.E’s relationship with Bible as well as
understanding Tanner’s choice of themes.
Scholars116 have proposed that since there was a process of creative identification and
interpretation of African Americans with the Bible. Thus, Tanner also participated in these
processes. His paintings employed the religious to convey the racial, which meant that the
composition of the paintings contained racial subtexts in the metaphoric language of the religious
narratives that he chose. The religious was a metaphor for the racial, and thus, race would be
implicit in the paintings, so the artist could communicate narratives of African American history
and experiences to African Americans who viewed his paintings. For example, Tanner’s
painting, Christ and Nicodemus (fig. 3), depicted Christ’s meeting with the Pharisee, Nicodemus,
to discuss his revolutionary teachings. It portrayed Nicodemus’s desire to learn from Christ, but
it also reflected the need to meet in secrecy for both participants because of the danger involved.
The artist covered the figures with the shroud of night. Thus, scholars, who noted the use of
religion “as” the racial, discovered the implicit subtext, or a “hidden transcript,” of the painting
was the correlation between the secrecy involved in Nicodemus’ visit to the secrecy of worship
among African American slaves and ex-slaves, who also had their meetings at night for the
protection and cover of darkness.117 Thus, the story of Nicodemus would reflect the African
American experience of secrecy in the early history of their religious experiences. Race would
be an obvious component of the artist’s paintings to African American audiences who could note
the “hidden” theme because of the connection between the appropriation of the biblical story as a
reflector of their history. Thus, the artist would be communicating a racial message and a
commentary on social justice despite his white figuration. Tanner’s shift to religious paintings
could be interpreted not as a neglect of his racial identity but an affirmation in a subtle yet
powerful way.
Another approach to the artist’s religious paintings was that Tanner was depicting the
“visually” the rhetoric and theology of the A.M.E. church. Thus, the paintings portrayed a
denominational, religious message that possibly could or could not contain a correlating racial
message, and Tanner drew from his A.M.E background the themes of his work. The marked
difference of this approach was that race was not necessarily a component of the artist’s work.
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Instead, the artist focused on the messages of his denomination, the A.M.E. Kristin Schwain
argued that the previous criticism was too general with their considerations of a loosely
structured African American Christianity and did not take into account that the artist had a
specific denominational experience. The artist was painting his own religious experience as it
was shaped by his A.M.E. tenets and theology, and his art was not necessarily a communication
with a certain group. Once again, there appears to be a dichotomy in Tanner scholarship as to
where the artist drew his inspiration for his art and what he was trying to communicate. One
scholar, Albert Boime, pointed out that Tanner’s religious works were “transformed into a site
for contestation between competing and differing ideologies” because “various groups had
designs on his African-American person and intellectual talents…to fulfill a particular role in
support of their respective agendas.”118
Boime’s point is well taken because it is easy to understand why Scarborough and
Washington would force racialized messages into Tanner’s paintings. The artist would become
demonstrative of his race and its potential while also fulfilling his social responsibility as a
Negro artist to help with his art to better his people. Thus, it is necessary to explore several of
Tanner’s religious paintings to see if either of the scholarly approaches presented are applicable.
Previous scholarship has been too narrowly focused on Tanner’s race or religious background,
and likely, the artist was informed by a complex commingling of religion and race in his art
instead of the solitary influence of one or another.
The two paintings classified by Scarborough as “having race” were Daniel in the Lion’s
Den and Resurrection of Lazarus (fig. 4). Daniel portrayed the moment after Daniel had been
thrust into the den of hungry lions, yet Tanner’s figure appeared unafraid. His stance was one of
calm assurance with his face tilted upward to the heavens.119 The lion’s den was mostly in
shadow with his face covered in darkness, but the viewer can see one beam of light that
illuminated Daniel’s hands, which are crossed in front of him. One bold lion approached him as
the other lions lurked in the background. Daniel’s calm faith in God to rescue him exuded from
the canvas, and the viewer was reassured that no harm would come to God’s faithful servant. It
is possible that Tanner chose to illustrate the story of Daniel because it contained the elements of
prejudice, conspiracy, isolation, and martyrdom at the same time that it also represented hope
and an unwavering faith in God. Daniel was prejudiced against and punished for his religious
beliefs, and a trap was set for him because his enemies knew that he would continue to pray and
glorify God despite what their new law required.120
Thus, Daniel was thrown into a den of hungry lions yet he remained untouched because
his faith in God made it possible for him to survive the impossible. Daniel arguably interested
Tanner because it is a story of oppression of an ethnic minority, an outsider of the dominant
society. Most importantly, it explored how faith in God can help the victims of persecution
persevere even in the face of what appears to be impossible adversity. The themes of
persecution in the narrative and in the painting would have resonance with any oppressed
peoples because of the injustice Daniel faced as a minority. The story of Daniel demonstrated
that God “delivers and rescues, / he works signs and wonders, / in heaven and on earth; / for he
saved Daniel / from the power of the lions.”121
Tanner’s The Resurrection of Lazarus expressed similar themes of hope and faith as
Daniel did. This painting depicted Jesus performing the miracle of bringing Lazarus back to life
after being dead for four days. Mary and Martha had previously sent a message to Jesus that
their brother, Lazarus, was ill, but Jesus waited before traveling to Bethany because he knew that
Lazarus was already dead. Thus, Tanner painted the exact moment when Lazarus was
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resurrected from the dead as the theme of the work. The artist once again used contrast in light
and dark, chiaroscuro, to develop his work. Most of the tomb was dark, and the viewer can
barely make out the awe-filled expressions of the crowd. One of the most distinct faces was that
of a small girl whose mouth was opened wide in shock because of the miracle that she just
witnessed. One woman covered her face in disbelief while a man standing on her left threw up
his hands in what appears to be a mingling of excitement and incredulity. The source of the light
in the tomb was unknown, but it was a warm light that enveloped Jesus and Lazarus and
highlighted some of the faces of the group. It almost seemed to be a celestial light that basked
over Lazarus and drew attention to and contrasted Jesus’s focused expression and calm poise to
those of the crowd. The theme of rebirth, redemption, and faith permeated Tanner’s painting. A
subtheme of the work was an unwavering faith in Jesus to provide an end to suffering and create
life anew. This painting conveyed the humanity of the figures with vivid emotions and reactions
to the miracle that had just occurred.
Similar to Daniel, Lazarus relied on the humanity of those depicted to make this
resurrection a domestic scene instead of an extraordinary one. A critic, Helen Cole, described
the painting as “the picture is most dignified and yet most dramatic in suggestion…He [Tanner]
has not chosen Biblical scenes because they were ‘nice to paint’ but because to him these events
are the most vitally interesting of all human history.”122 The artist did find these events to be
“interesting” in human history, and that is how he chose to portray these events with an emphasis
on humanity rather than divinity. In the painting, Jesus stood among the mourners as a man first,
according to another critic, “standing alongside other men,”123 which asserted Christ’s humanity
over his divinity in this setting. The choice of humanity over divinity, ordinary over
extraordinary, was a way in which Tanner could assert the universality of these themes for all
people by providing scenes that related to the everyday lives of the viewers. Even in Daniel the
viewer can identify with the human experiences of struggle and hope. Daniel and Lazarus were
both ordinary men who faced adversity and death with help from the extraordinary, the divine.
Marcus Bruce suggested that the artist “infused” common scenes “with a set of questions and
ideas that they otherwise might not have,” which meant Tanner’s paintings motivated the viewer
to examine his/her own life and self.124 The artist demonstrated that those involved in these
often-miraculous moments were above all human and ordinary, which implied that each human
had the power to interact with and have faith in the divine.
But was there race in the paintings? Dewey F. Mosby proposed that there was a
universality of themes along with racial connotations of the scenes portrayed. For Mosby,
Daniel encapsulated themes of slavery, false accusation, execution, and martyrdom, which he
proposed reverberated with African Americans. The African experience in America was
wrought with struggle, oppression, and slavery, which were all similar to the experience of the
biblical prophet. He also suggested that Tanner chose Daniel because Bishop Tanner considered
Daniel as a prophet who recognized the black race.125 Thus, Daniel would be an important
biblical figure to African Americans because he remarked on their presence in the sacred text.
Daniel and Lazarus both “found in a biblical subject connection to social issues, and Mosby
connected Lazarus’s “promise of renewed life” to “reborn hope offered to African Americans by
the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.”126 He suggested that Tanner chose the theme of
Lazarus as a visual signifier because he drew from his background in the “black church,” which
was a “tradition rooted in the equality of persons.”127 Albert Boime pointed out Booker T.
Wahington’s suggestion that hymns often had double meanings that conveyed freedom, which
hinted that Tanner’s paintings could contain a subtext of black liberation.128 Another scholar,
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Jennifer Harper, also proposed there was connotation of freedom and emancipation for blacks in
Tanner’s work. Daniel’s redemption and “subsequent emancipation” could be linked to the
Emancipation Proclamation129 and the hope of freedom that this narrative provided African
American believers. She proposed that Lazarus also contained a message of liberation that could
be connected to Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863. All of these scholars’ connections between race
and religion drew upon W.S. Scarborough’s discussion of race in Tanner’s art.
Scarborough’s commentary of both works informed these scholars’ discussions of the
connection of biblical themes to racial issues of the day. It is possible that Scarborough’s words
were taken out of context because he did state that both paintings contained race except it seems
that he was referring to the Jewish figuration instead of racial context. Scarborough stated that
Tanner “studied to put ‘race’ in” the paintings but race came from the “fruit of originality” to use
“the lowly people of Palestine for his types” and “he has succeeded admirably…in showing us
the Jew as he must have lived and looked nearly twenty centuries ago.”130 The race in the
paintings appeared to be referring to Tanner’s careful depiction of the figures in each of the
works as “authentically” Jewish, and thus, in this sense, he studied to infuse the work with race,
but it was the “actual” ethnicity of those in the biblical stories. Albert Boime noted that
Afrocentric readings of Tanner’s work often assert connections between the African and the Jew,
and some have even proposed that the portrayal of the Jews in the paintings were representative
of the A.M.E., which could point to Boime’s earlier discussion of racialized agendas that were
placed on Tanner’s work. From Scarborough’s commentary, it is hard to determine if he actually
meant that the artist was portraying the African race, though this should not dismiss scholarly
interpretations that suggest he did. He also admitted that the artist used his religious sentiments
to inform his work as well, and this reference is key because these scholars alluded to some
relationship between religion and race, in which religion was almost a tool for race, in Tanner’s
religious experience but they did not explain exactly what this relationship is.
Kristin Schwain also noted some level of interaction between religion and race, and she
suggested “Tanner’s selection of a religious subject for his painting [Resurrection o Lazarus]
points to a political agenda because of the intimate relationship between religion and race in the
A.M.E. Church.”131 She argued that the A.M.E. fostered the artist intellectually and artistically,
and thus, Tanner’s work communicated the hermeneutic of the A.M.E. in visual form. However,
she battled against general ideas about the “Black Church” influencing the artist, and instead, she
considered the specific influence of Tanner’s denomination on his art. She like other scholars
used Scarborough’s commentary, and she proposed that Tanner racialized his paintings using
Jewish figures because African Americans had “allegorical and sociopolitical” relationships with
Jews.132 The artist, however, remained silent on both accounts. Whether he chose themes that
communicated with African Americans or if Jews were symbolic for African Americans, it is
doubtful that anyone will ever know.
Schwain proposed that the artist’s religious paintings contained political agendas, which
could be accurate, but more importantly, she reestablished the connection between Tanner and
the A.M.E. Yet she was concerned with how the artist portrayed a personal religious experience,
which would not necessarily communicate a broader message. However, her claim of Tanner’s
denominational focus is problematic because as his life progressed the artist moved away from
the specific tenets and teachings of the A.M.E Church and instead became more spiritual and
more focused on the universality and humanity of Christianity, which is a message that he did
want to express to others. Tanner was a religious mystic whose painting allowed him a glimpse
of the divine and encouraged him to demonstrate the universal humanity of Christianity. The
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connection between religious affiliation and race, instead of one having prominence over the
other, is necessary to understand Tanner’s work and life.
Cultural heritage and religious background inspired Tanner, but not exactly in the method
that aforementioned scholars suggested. It appeared that Tanner’s choice of biblical narrative
was influenced by his cultural heritage as well as his religious heritage because he chose themes
that had resonance to his experiences as a black man in a racist American society. Race and
religion are implicit in his preference of biblical narratives because of his denominational
background, which often commingled these identities and noted the intense relationship between
them in history, doctrine, and theology. It seems altogether possible, but the claim that Tanner
picked these themes to communicate to African Americans appears less likely because the artist
wanted to communicate the universal and domestic message of Christianity, which he was not
limiting to one group of people. The artist was, however, informed by the A.M.E. background
that combined ideas about race and religion. The A.M.E. was founded because of experiences of
racism in white denominations. Race and religion informed one another, and religion was
viewed as a method to uplift the race from the marginalization of slavery. Schwain noted the
“intimate relationship” between religion and race but did not explore the workings of the
relationship. Tanner’s denominational background also influenced his choice of works, and thus,
race was not an active part of his paintings, but it was implicit in which themes resonated in his
everyday and religious experiences.
Religion and race had an intimacy, a blending, in the history, doctrine, and theology of
the A.M.E. Church, which molded the way the artist viewed the world around him. Religion and
race, for Tanner, were in a dialectic in his life always informing ideas of the other, and this
dialectic is reflected in themes like hope and struggle that were key to the A.M.E. as religious
and racial, biblical and historical. Religion at times could be an expression of the racial, but for
Tanner, this connection was intertwined in his life and appeared in his work in the choice of
themes. His choice was a byproduct of his religious background in which race was interwoven.
Tanner’s religious experience differed as his life progressed. He became less denominational
and more spiritual. A form of mysticism emerged out of Tanner’s religious and racial
experiences. In the face of his struggles, Tanner turned to God for solace and reassurance, and
he discovered that the world was interconnected, human to God and human to human. His works
became an expression of the kinship of the world, which demonstrated how arbitrary were the
racial barriers, which defined his life. The artist became a mystic and his art became a form of
devotion and a religious ritual for him. He wanted to demonstrate his personal experience on
canvas while communicating a universal message that noted the humanity of all and their
connection to divinity.
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CHAPTER 3: VISUAL MYSTICISM
In 1924, Jessie Fauset, a writer for The Crisis, interviewed Henry Tanner, and she asked
him if there was any truth in a particular story about the artist and his father that had been
relayed to her. The story revolved around Bishop Tanner’s desire for his son to be a minister,
and Tanner’s supposed reply was “No, father, you preach from the pulpit and I will preach with
my brush.”133 When asked if this event had occurred, the artist replied, “My answer was: That’s
a pretty story—I won’t destroy it.” When Fauset asked him again about the story in her
interview, he gave her an answer, and she responded, “For the first time in my life I resemble a
great artist. I won’t destroy a pretty story.” Whether Tanner preached with his brush is a
question worth exploring, but the religious experience portrayed in his paintings is hard to deny.
Henry Tanner has been called a religious mystic by his son, biographers, scholars, and journalists
alike because of the religious emotion that exuded from his canvases. His art has been viewed as
demonstrative of the interaction between human and divine. Was he a religious mystic? And if
so, can it be argued that he was a “visual mystic” because of the mode of expression for his
experiences, the canvas and brush? This chapter will explore if the artist was a mystic, and more
importantly, how to define Tanner as a visual mystic. He desired to communicate the universal
humanity that he found undeniable in Christianity and the potential that all have for
communication and interaction with the God. Tanner was also visually pious, which was an
aspect of his mysticism because painting was his avocation and his devotion to God.
To understand the artist’s mysticism, it is essential to understand what the term mysticism
means. Some scholars, with a view to its broadness and its apparent lack of parameters, have
concluded that mysticism is a tenuous category or an “invention.”134 Despite the claim of
invalidity, mysticism still exists as a category and field of study. When it is defined, mysticism
has a variety of key elements. Mysticism has been classified as an extraordinary experience with
visions and deep divinely inspired emotions. Often, the definition relies on the mystery of the
relationship with the divine, and whether this relationship might or might not be bound by
institutions and denominations. Mystical experience can be described as more spiritual and
intuitive than other religious experiences because the mystic senses the “universal” elements of
the world and humanity and believes in the interconnectedness of the phenomena in the universe.
William James was perhaps one of the first to comment, in America, on the nature of mysticism
and to exhibit that it was not necessarily an exceptional experience. James proposed that the
category of mysticism was too broad and “sentimental” without a basis in logic or reason, and
thus, he argued that the category had four components that would determine if an experience was
mystical, which were “ineffability,” “noetic quality,” “transiency,” and “passivity.”
For James, the mystical experience defied expression, provided insights of the truth, and
was unsustainable for long periods of time. Additionally, the mystic would feel like he/she was
under the control of a “superior power.”135 The psychologist also stated that one could not deny
that mystical experiences existed “because of the deep impression which they make on those
who have them.”136 Though his parameters might seem limiting, James has been criticized
because these criteria allow for a proliferation of experiences to count as mystical. James
thought that others considered “religious mysticism” a privileged state when in reality, mystical
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experiences occurred in many forms and varieties. He, however, has been lauded because of the
sympathy of his approach to mysticism because he concluded that these states were as much fact
as any other sensation that we perceive.137 James’s approach to mysticism still influences the
way that scholars of mysticism think about the category because of his insistence in its existence
and its ordinariness.
Hal Bridges, who appropriated James’s exploratory approach, suggested that mysticism
could be defined as a “selfless, direct, transcendent, unitive experience of God or ultimate reality,
and the experient’s interpretation of that experience.”138 Bridges hypothesized that unity with
the divine was the universal facet of mysticism in all cultures, and thus, this unity became the
most important part of the mystic’s experience. It is important to note that Bridges denoted
interpretation as a component of mysticism because the mystic must find a method to make sense
of his/her experiences. Another scholar, Bernard McGinn, cautioned against thinking of
mysticism as a religion that mystics practice. He put forward the notion that mystics practice
religion that is guided by their religious texts, and these texts molded and defined the mystic’s
relationship with the divine. Experience, to McGinn, was not the correct term to classify the
method in which the mystic interacted with divinity. Instead, he proposed that the mystic had a
“consciousness” of God or ultimate reality. He, thus, defined mysticism as “reactions to the
consciousness of the presence of the divine.”139 Consciousness denoted a more passive than
active relation to the divine, and thus McGinn’s definition was not limiting to what mystical
encounters could be because of his focus on awareness rather than experience. Thus, the mystic
reacted to awareness of divinity rather than experiencing divinity.
Bruno Borchert also argued that mysticism was a phenomenon that occurred in all
religions and cultures, and the essence of mysticism was “the experimental knowledge that, in
one way or another, everything is interconnected, that all things have a single source.”140
Borchert followed James’s “neutral” methods of observing and understanding mysticism.
Similar to McGinn’s consciousness, Borchert noted a knowledge or a perception of the divine
and the interconnectedness of the world. He downplayed the experiential component of the
mystic’s relationship with God. Interestingly, he discussed the connection between mystics and
artists because of their similar views of the world, though he pointed out that they were not the
same. Mystics and artists both understood the world differently than others and were uneasy
with their place in the world. For Borchert, the artist and the mystic did not occupy a “special
place” in society, but they were “pathfinders” or trailblazers who devoted themselves to a certain
aspect of life. Mysticism like art was a creative process in which these experiences found shape
through words, canvas, or behavior. The mystic and the artist were sensitive souls, who had an
awareness that something was not right with the world, and thus, there was an unresolved tension
that they “endowed” with form. Both would return to this inner conflict again and again,
reflecting upon it and giving it form through various mediums.141 The mystic and the artist have
much in common from talent, in language or art, to an understanding of the world that was not in
sync with others. The worldviews of artists and mystics often conflicted with how the world
worked. By Borchert’s parameters, Henry Tanner was both an artist and a mystic with
sensitivity to the world and a desire to communicate the universal truth of the connection
between God and human.
In examining these various definitions of mysticism, we recognize several key factors:
(1) a consciousness of the divine, (2) the idea of the unity of God and mystic, (3) the mystic’s
sense of the interconnectedness of the world, (4) often a perception that something is not quite
right with the world, (5) heightened emotion, and (6) mysticism springs from the understanding
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of a religious tradition. With the use of these parameters, I will propose that Henry Tanner was a
mystic, and then, I will propose that he was a visual mystic because of the importance of his
mode of expression, art, for his mystical consciousness. Tanner painted his glimpses of divinity
and humanity to share with his viewers the interconnectedness of humans to each other and to
God. To the artist, painting was devotional and a display of his personal, religious, and mystical
experiences. Thus, painting was his practice of his religious belief as well as a way to resolve
and communicate his connection to God as well as his inner conflict caused by his understanding
of the world.
Many have classified Henry Tanner as a mystic and have noted the religious emotion of
his artistic themes. When reflecting on his father and his work, Jesse Ossawa Tanner stated,
“My father was a great mystic, in the sense that his intellectual stature was above human
contingencies, he felt influences which the common mortal does not perceive, his pictures reflect
this perception.”142 His son’s description painted a portrait of a sensitive man with perceptions
that ordinary “mortals” could not conceive, and these insights on humanity and divinity appeared
in his works. Marcia Matthews noted the sensitivity and the mysticism of the artist. According
to Matthews, Tanner “lost interest in the formal aspects of religion,” and “even became a
Christian Scientist.”143 Christian Science was not a lasting affiliation for Tanner, though his
mysticism seemed to be effected by it. Matthews commented, “By nature Henry Tanner was a
mystic who found emotional fulfillment with God,” and this “mystical element” apparent in his
work “gave his art the greatest appeal and…kept him from becoming just another raconteur of
sacred anecdotes.”144 Tanner was devoted to God, and he practiced daily mediations that
indicate his devout faith. His meditations were:
Monday—I am thankful for Thy unfailing bounty
Tuesday—I rejoice in my ability to give blessings to others
Wednesday—I invite the Christ spirit to manifest in me
Thursday—I realize the meaning of Peace on Earth, good will toward men
Friday—I follow the star (high ideal) that leads me to the Christ
Saturday—I am poised. I am not worried or hurried. All my affairs are in order and
harmony
Sunday—Joy, peace and plenty are now mine.145
It is unknown how long the artist practiced Christian Science, but it appears that his
experience of this movement had a lasting impact on his religious life. Christian Scientists
believed that God was All-in-All, and that the universe was connected through the divine. God
was constantly “self-revealed and self-revealing to His creation, and could not by His very nature
be self-concealed or arbitrary in His self-disclosures.”146 Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the
religious movement, wrote, “The entire creation of God symbolizes nothing else but wisdom,
love, and truth. All that He had made is harmonious, joy-giving and eternal. He also hath made
man in His ‘image and likeness,’ and this must be the perfect man.”147 Eddy proposed a
harmonial universe that was interconnected through God because God was everywhere and
everything. Christian Science also emphasized self-improvement by controlling one’s thoughts,
studying, and praying. To Christian Scientist, matter was not real, and the Divine Mind was all,
which was the connection each person had to God.
Tanner’s daily meditations were similar to the prayers of Christian Scientists with his
focus on harmony, thankfulness for God’s bounty, and on the high ideals of Jesus, and these
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meditations were what Tanner reflected on each day to grasp a better understanding. Christian
Scientists prayed by “mentally reviewing Eddy’s characteristics for God and man” because
prayer was their “vehicle for ‘knowing the Truth,’” and these prayers and studies were daily
reflections on the nature of their religious belief.148 Eddy’s interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer
noted the harmony of the universe, God’s grace, and divine guidance, all of which had great
importance to her.149 Tanner, like the Christian Scientists, was pantheistic because he believed
that God was everywhere and was a part of everything. His son stated that his father “felt that
the presence of God stretches out through the cosmos and his love extends to other worlds than
our own.”150 A tenet of this movement was the ability to control one’s life (including healing
one’s sickness or error) through this relationship with God. It is easy to see why Christian
Science would be appealing to Tanner, who never quite had control over his life and was plagued
by frail nerves and illness. Christian Science had the potential to help the artist “fix” what he
thought was wrong with this world. It also furnished the artist with a view of the
interconnectedness of the world, which he would emphasize again and again in his work and
commentary. Tanner did not remain a Christian Scientist, but he was impacted by their beliefs
about God and the world, and his art resonated their emphasis on the human connection to the
divine and interconnectedness of the universe. Tanner hoped his art would be demonstrative of
this interconnectedness, or kinship, of the world.
Marcus Bruce, a biographer of artist, reiterated Matthews’s claims of mysticism. Bruce
noted that Tanner was “unorthodox” in his beliefs because he had shed the denominational
strictures of the A.M.E. His faith became more spiritual and more concerned with universal
themes in Christianity, which led Bruce to describe the artist as a mystic. The artist “believed in
God and the revelations of the Bible” yet he also thought that an open mind “made humans more
receptive to an encounter with the divine,” and he wanted his paintings to provide a place where
this interaction could occur.151 God and humanity needed this communication, and the artist
wanted to provide a venue for this connection. The artist had commented on why he chose
religious paintings and what message he hoped the paintings would pass on to viewers. Tanner
stated, “I paint things I see and believe… I believe in my religion. I have chosen the character of
my art because it conveys my message and tells what I want to tell my own generation and leave
to the future.”152 He chose to paint religious scenes because they conveyed his message of
interaction between humanity and divinity, and he desired future generations to have access to
this through his paintings. Tanner hoped this message would remind future viewers of his
paintings of the presence of God, and that they, too, could rely on the divine in periods of
struggle like the figures of his art.
For Tanner, previous religious paintings of other artists did not convey the true religious
sentiment that he believed they should nor did they allow for a communication of a religious
message. Previous artists believed that religious art, due to its subject matter, did not have to
meet the expectations of fine art. The artist proposed that this was not true because of the
elevated status of the subject matter in these religious paintings, which should meet and exceed
the characteristics of fine art. According to the artist, religious art had become “mediocre” and
“uninteresting,” and this art abounded with “bogus” sentiment. Tanner “believed most sincerely
in religious sentiment in religious pictures but, so far, have never seen it in a canvas which did
not possess also artistic qualities.”153 Religious sentiment belonged in religious art, and for this
artist, his religious emotions about the divine were the message he conveyed in his art to show
his relationship with God and how others could foster their own connections. Tanner’s intent for
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his paintings was to make the Bible “real” to his viewers and demonstrate that God interacted
with humanity in his time as well as biblical times. He stated:
My effort has been to not only put the Biblical incident in the original setting…but at the
same time give the human touch “which makes the whole world kin” and which ever
remains the same. While giving the truth of detail not to lose sight of more important
matter, by this I mean that of color and design should be as carefully thought out as if the
subject had only these qualities. To me it seems no handicap to have a subject of nobility
worthy of one’s best continued effort. There is but one thing more important than these
qualities and that is to try and convey to your public the reverence and elevation these
subjects impart to you, which the primary cause of their choice.154
His commentary represented the importance of his religious subjects to him, but also his desire to
impart this “reverence” to the audiences of his paintings. Thus, the choice of paintings and
themes came from his own personal awareness of divinity, and this relationship to God should
have made “the whole world kin,” but Tanner realized that many did not recognize the humanity
of all races and peoples. Thus, his art was a way to show that all had the same struggles and joys
and the potential for a relationship with God. His work emphasized themes of hope, struggle,
sacrifice, rebirth, and unwavering faith in God that supplied his biblical figures with the ability to
persevere, and his works revealed the communication between God and human. Tanner’s
rendering of this interaction was different from previous artists because the artist maintained a
relationship with God, and he believed that God communicated with him. It was a mystical
process because the artist had a consciousness of the divine, “true religious sentiment,” which he
conveyed in his art. To examine Tanner’s message, it is necessary to discuss his paintings and
how he portrays the interaction. I will mainly explore The Annunciation (1898) and briefly
discuss The Resurrection of Lazarus.
The Annunciation (fig. 5) is one of Tanner’s most famous religious paintings, and it was a
depiction of the moment that Mary learns from the angel Gabriel that she will give birth to the
son of God. A contemporary of Tanner described it best:
the young Jewish peasant sitting on the edge of the couch wearing the common striped
cotton of the Eastern women of the poorer class, a costume which they have kept to the
present day, no halo or celestial attributes about her, and only the flood of golden light to
herald the approach of the angel. It was decidedly an unconventional treatment of the
subject.155
Unlike previous paintings of the same subject, the artist relied upon the simplicity of scene
instead of a grandiose recreation. Tanner’s Mary was a young Jewish girl, who appeared
thoughtful and reflective of Gabriel’s message, and Gabriel did not appear as “bewinged angel”
but as a beam of light that permeated the room with its glow. The young woman watched the
celestial light as she pondered her great responsibility. Tanner picked a scene from the Bible that
focused on the interaction of divinity and humanity because he portrayed the moment when
Mary learned that she would bear Jesus. Gabriel communicated with Mary, and she listened
while attempting to comprehend his message. With Tanner’s emphasis on Mary’s humanity and
ordinariness, the viewer can relate to her person to person instead of seeing her in the elevated
position as the mother of Jesus. The emphasis on her humanity was contrasted with the figure of
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Gabriel as a “flood of golden light.” Where Mary was substantial, Gabriel was immaterial. The
artist demonstrated this communication between divine and human, seen and unseen. By
portraying Mary as ordinary and human, Tanner showed the potential for all humans to have this
intimate relationship with the divine.
As with previous and later paintings, the artist depicted God and messengers of God in
the form of light, which resonated their divine status in contrast to their human counterparts.
Light was the artist’s outlet to represent Gabriel, and thus, divinity and love. A New York Times
art critic proposed that Tanner was “pantheistic” in his paintings because he revered everything
and light was his way to express love. In Tanner’s works, light was “sweet and soft,” and no
matter where it emanated from, “it is always a source of goodness” and “even touched by it,
people are safe.”156 Light was Tanner’s expression of God that radiated in his paintings to
provide guidance and safety for humanity and offered comfort in the face of struggle and
oppression. In The Resurrection of Lazarus (fig.4), Tanner employed light that basked over
Lazarus and Jesus and highlighted the miracle of rebirth that was possible with faith in God.
Lazarus like The Annunciation revolved around the idea of interaction between humanity and
divinity except divinity was in the form of man, Jesus, in the painting. Jesus also represented
God for Tanner. The artist depicted both the moment when Jesus called for Lazarus to awaken
from the dead and Lazarus’s stunned awakening. The representative of the divine, Jesus, in
performing a miracle demonstrated the interactivity of the relationship between human and God
because the divine actively involved itself in human life. This interaction affected all in Tanner’s
composition. The onlookers’ faces were mixtures of horror and awe while Jesus remained calm
and composed. Jesus’s composure contradicted the reactions of the crowd, which emphasized
his divinity and their humanity. His divinity made the impossible possible and guided and
reassured those present. Tanner’s art thus revealed the communication between human and God
and the divine intervention in human life. The artist bathed the painting in a warm light that
connoted the miracle that just occurred. Light, again, was love for the artist. Tanner used light
as a metaphor for his creation of his works as well. For the artist, “brilliant ideas” were a
pleasure to work with, but some times these ideas did not last. He stated:
Then one by one the great hopes you have vanish, the various qualities you knew you
were going to get fail to materialize, the lights go out—what misery—then it is
determination to succeed has to be evoked…but again light begins to appear and with it a
picture, something quite a little different in details from your original idea, but one which
work is a pleasure.157
Light, then, for Tanner became his much-needed inspiration that possibly was derived from his
relationship with God. His reliance upon light as an analogy for the divine in his paintings had
resonance in how he described his life and viewed God’s interaction in his own life. When art
became a “drudge,” Tanner saw light that reinvigorated the process that he loved. Light was a
metaphor for his painting and in his life.
The use of light as a symbol for God was a common metaphor in the writings of other
mystics. Light symbolized good and perfection while dark was metaphor for evil. Many
mystics employed light as a metaphor for God including Hildegard of Bingen, St. John of the
Cross, Mechtchild of Madgeburg, and St. Therese of the Child Jesus. Light was a source of
comfort and reassurance. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a nun whose mystic visions of
God began in early childhood, and most of her visions brimmed with the eternal light of God.
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Hildegard believed that the divine spoke to her and classified itself in terms of light, and she
continued to depict God in terms of light, fire, and illumination. She stated, “I…heard a
heavenly voice speaking to me: I, the living light and obscured illumination.”158 For Hildegard,
God was “signified” as a bright light because the divine related to the purity of light “without
any blemish of illusion, defect, or falsehood.”159 She was inspired to write about her visions
when a “burning light coming from heaven poured” into her mind, which did not burn her but
warmed her heart.160 Divine light gave her guidance, much like it gave Tanner inspiration for his
paintings. St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) viewed God as light that guided but also contrasted
with the implied evil of the dark. In one of his poems, he wrote that even “upon the darksome
night,” there was “that light [that] guided me/ More surely than the noonday’s brightest glare,/
To a place where none would be.”161 In another poem, he described the divine as a “fount” from
which all light sprang forth.
The idea of God as a fountain of light also appeared in the writings of Mechtchild of
Magdeburg (1207-1297), who discussed the divine as the “flowing light of Godhead.” Light was
dazzling, for Mechtchild, and it radiated from God, angels, and surrounded “the souls of the
blessed.”162 St. Therese of the Child Jesus (1873-1897) envisioned God as a “golden trail”163
that guided her. St. Therese recalled a “night of light” in which she received the calling from the
divine and first experienced her mysticism.164 Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), the founder of
Christian Science, who has been described as “the perfect American mystic,”165 depicted her
inspiration to found the religious movement in terms of light. Once she told a student, “It is not
because I have been specially chosen to reveal this Science, but it is as if there were those
standing near the window, and because I was the nearest to the pane, the light fell upon me.”166
A scholar of Christian Science, Stephen Gottschalk, commented on the mystical language she
used to convey her discovery of Christian Science. Eddy wrote:
The moment arrived of the heart’s bridal to [a] more spiritual existence. When the door
opened I was waiting and watching; and, lo, the bridegroom came! The character of the
Christ was illuminated by the midnight torches of Spirit.167
Like the aforementioned mystics, Eddy portrayed the experience and inspiration of God in terms
of light and illumination. Thus, Tanner’s depiction and discussion of divinity as light followed a
long history of mystics signifying God as light. Along with his use of light, Tanner often
returned to biblical figures and themes again and again on canvas to garner a better
understanding of the subject. Jesse Tanner proposed that his father, due to the long labor of his
paintings, wanted viewers to study his paintings many times to find new themes and nuances,168
which Tanner practiced himself by reevaluating certain themes at different points in his life.
Painting gave the artist a sense of renewal and hope, and thus, he tackled some themes several
times to apprehend them and find incidents of hope and faith.
Tanner painted at least three themes or figures many times in his life including Daniel
and the Lion’s Den (fig. 6) and The Good Shepherd (fig. 7). Marcus Bruce deemed Daniel and
the good shepherd “figures of faith,” which implied their reliance on faith in God that Tanner
found crucial to discover himself and to communicate to others. The artist painted at least three
versions of Daniel and the Lion’s Den, but two have been lost though the original version still
exists in a photograph. In the first version, Daniel’s composure was calm, and he looked
upward to the heavens assured that God would “deliver” him from the lions. One beam of light
illuminated Daniel’s body yet his face was obscured by shadow. Daniel was a favorite of
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Tanner’s because God interceded to save Daniel from the lions because of his unwavering faith
and devotion to God. It represented the interaction between human and divine, which provided
the ability to overcome adversity and oppression. The later version of Daniel was not as
optimistic with Daniel’s posture being resigned and his face tilted down. This figure was not as
confidant as the original and appeared burdened by the weight of his struggle yet God was still
present in the den to protect him from the lions.
This version was created between 1907 and 1918 before and after the advent of World
War I during a period of struggle and depression for the artist, and thus, his painting seems to
signify his struggle rather than Daniel’s. Many scholars have proposed that Tanner identified
with Daniel and his struggles, and one noted that perhaps the artist was “portraying a vision of
himself in Daniel in the figure of the lonely, persecuted, yet persevering prophet.”169 The artist
like the biblical prophet possibly was waiting for God’s help and guidance. Thus, it is obvious
that the artist found solace and hope in this theme that reflected his personal experience while
communicating that message to others. What is most intriguing about the painting was the
presence of the divine despite Daniel’s resigned faith because the artist still asserted interaction
and protection from God even when the figure’s faith was not the strongest. The biblical figure
and Tanner both waited from assurance from God yet the artist portrayed this divine interaction
despite the struggle he faced because he felt that God was ever-present.
The good shepherd from Jesus’s parables was also a prevalent theme for Tanner because
Jesus used this parable as an analogy for Himself. The good shepherd who protected his “sheep”
and would lay down his life for them.170 Jesus stated, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own
and my own know me, …I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them
also…So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”171 This imagery was appealing to Tanner
because of Jesus as protector of all, and the passage’s emphasis on Christianity as a unifier and
the “true” faith. Jesus protected and unified, and the artist reevaluated and reflected upon the
magnitude of this theme in five paintings. The first version painted in 1902-1903 was a night
scene with light radiating from a full moon that was partially obscured by trees. The shepherd, a
wisp of shadow, seemed to carry a lamb in his arms as he walked under massive gnarled trees.
The landscape was dark though not foreboding, and the viewer had a sense that the little lamb
was safe as long as it stayed in the shepherd’s arms. In two later versions of The Good Shepherd
(1917 and 1922), Tanner depicted the shepherd more clearly, and he was still carrying a little
lamb. In a 1922 version (fig. 8), the subtitle of the painting was “lost sheep,” and the shepherd
appeared to be rescuing a lamb that he now transported on his shoulders. The pair emerged from
the shadow of the landscape, and the lamb was protected from whatever lurked in the shadow.
Tanner’s shepherd was analogous to Jesus, and the lamb was representative of believers yet this
version communicated that God can rescue even those “lambs” that have gone astray.
In these paintings of the shepherd and his lamb, the artist depicted, through metaphor,
again the interaction between the divine and humanity. This particular version has a similar
subtheme to the later Daniel, which suggested that despite one’s situation God would still
intervene and act to help humanity. Faith and hope, no matter the situation, had great value to
Tanner, which explained why he focused on these “figures of faith” and how their experiences
could communicate to the audiences of his paintings. “All was not lost” reverberated through
Tanner’s art because he desired to display that when faith was strongest or not that God still had
contact with humanity. To Tanner, this connection was a universal truth of Christianity and
suggested the kinship of all humanity. The artist hoped his paintings would depict how the all
peoples were kin because of the universal aspects of the human experience he exhibited. His
39
son, Jesse, explained his father’s faith and the message that his paintings communicated. The
younger Tanner wrote:
Though my father felt that the presence of God stretches out through the cosmos and his
love extends to other worlds than our own, he also felt that man has an active role to play
and should not submit passively to his fate. Christ watches over his flock…but evil is a
tangible thing and God needs us to help fight with him against evil and we need God to
guide us. (We all have a little of God in us).172
Jesse Tanner captured the essence of Tanner’s belief and the essence of the religious
paintings, the relationship between God and humanity was interactive and reciprocal to the artist.
Tanner desired the viewers of his paintings to be cognizant of the interaction and not be passive,
and his paintings were an example of the potential for interaction. His art was also
demonstrative of the omnipresence of God in the universe and how all humanity had this
presence inside them. This inner divinity connected all humanity to God and to each other.
Henry Tanner was a mystic because he sensed the interconnectedness of the world, and he
sought to connect humans to each other and to God. He was visual mystic because he portrayed
his personal experience (arguably for him, a universal experience) with divinity on canvas for all
to see and to understand. He sensed good and evil in the world, and he presented in his art
adversity that was always overcome by Daniel, Lazarus, and the little lamb. His visual
mysticism stemmed from his religious experiences and encounters with racism because the artist
confronted barriers, which he employed his Christian beliefs to understand. Racism had no place
in religion for the A.M.E., but African Americans were still prejudiced against and treated
unfairly. The denomination stressed the universal humanity of all yet the members of their
congregations confronted attacks on their dignity and humanity. Tanner faced racial barriers,
which were often incomprehensible and unjust, and made the artist uneasy in the world. For
comfort and understanding, the artist turned to his personal relationship with God. His
mysticism emerged from his feeling that something was not right with the world, and his attempt
to show how the world could be corrected. Tanner discovered the interconnectedness of the
phenomena of the universe, and he wanted to show how the whole world was kin. Racial
boundaries were arbitrary if humans were connected to each other and God. His visual
mysticism was a way to communicate this kinship, and it was a result of the A.M.E. teachings
that stressed the humanity of all and the Christian Science focus on the interconnection of us all
through God. His religious works, thus, were an extension of his black genre paintings because
both emphasized the universal humanity inherent in us all. His black genre paintings were an
attempt to demonstrate humanity that connected us, and his religious works exhibited not only
the humanity but also the connection to divinity. His visual expression of his mysticism was his
attempt to reconnect humanity by de-emphasizing racial lines and centering on the basic
humanity of us all. Henry Tanner’s mysticism caused the artist to create a visual expression of
this consciousness and interaction with the divine yet he was also devoted to his painting, which
also led to a form of his visual piety that was displayed on canvas.
Before a discussion of Tanner’s visual piety, an exploration of what the term means is
necessary. In his Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images, David
Morgan argued that religious images, fine art or mass-produced, can become devotional objects
to their viewers, and these images also foster spiritual formation. Morgan argued, “The act of
looking itself contributes to religious formation and, indeed, constitutes a powerful practice of
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belief.”173 Visual piety is this devotion to religious images that is a practice of the viewer’s
religious belief. Viewers contemplate and venerate the figures in these images, and Morgan
proposed that the body of the believer was engaged in this visual piety “because the
transcendence they seek is deliverance from ailment and anguish.”174 The viewer seeks comfort
from the images and prays for help for his/her suffering. The viewer’s gaze is broken down into
two categories, a form of seeing that “fixes on the divine as present” and “an act of seeing that
invites the sacred into a mundane existence in order to achieve a particular end such as
healing,”175 and both of these methods focus on the interaction between the viewer and the
religious image. The viewer at times could just want the reassurance of the presence of the
divine or could want help from the divine, which he/she hoped to accomplish through devotion
to the image.
Interaction between viewer and image is the main concern for Morgan’s theory; however,
I propose that the interaction between viewer and image is not the only way to apply his theory,
but instead the relationship between the artist and his/her art can also be considered as acts of
piety. The artist’s creation of a religious painting or sculpture can be an act of piety because the
artist, like the aforementioned viewer-devotee, can be a practicing a form of religious belief
through his/her artistic medium. The artist with every brush stroke can be venerating the images
while attempting to find the divine in mundane and in the present or could be hoping to achieve
reciprocity for his/her artistic devotion. It appears that Henry Ossawa Tanner is a case study for
the artist as the creator of religious images and as the devotee. The artist created images, which
centered on God’s presence and interaction in human life and the importance of faith, and these
images were a visualization of his own religious experiences as well as a veneration of the
relationship between God and humans.
Tanner’s work has two purposes, which are (1) the artist created the work as a form of
devotion and as a way to understand God, and (2) his work was supposed to communicate with
its viewers the interaction and connection of humanity and divinity, which was a reflection of the
artist’s mystical relationship with God. Thus, Tanner’s images have the power to affirm his
belief and possibly have the power, aura, to make others believe as well. In another work, David
Morgan, building on Benjamin Walter’s theory, proposed that certain images contain an aura,
which is a power to “impress” upon its viewers an “authenticity, veracity, or authority” of the
subject portrayed.176 I propose that the artist was visually pious and that his paintings contained
this aura, which conveyed his relationship to God as well as the ability for others to partake in
this same interaction. Tanner’s images have a power to communicate the authenticity of God’s
relationship with his figures and with himself. The artist, thus, was visually a mystic and
visually pious due to his devotion and his demonstration of the divine in his art. It is necessary
to understand Tanner as a visual mystic, as well as visually pious, because then one can see the
goal of his art: to bring people to God and to each other. He painted what he learned from his
mysticism and his faith in God, so that he could convince the audiences of his paintings of the
centrality of divinity in the universe and their connectedness to one another. Painting was not
just a career choice to Henry Tanner but a devotion, a religious experience and practice in itself.
Painting “was the place where he gained a deeper sense of humanity and occasionally glimpsed
the divine. It was the vocation to which he always returned.”177 Art sustained the artist and
became a way to communicate personal experience of God while providing others a venue to a
similar relationship and devotion. Tanner knew he wanted to be painter from the moment he saw
a painter in Fairmount Park, and his passion never waned. After he graduated from high school,
he received a job in a flourmill, which did not provide much time for his art. Thus, Tanner
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awakened early each morning to catch “the precious minutes of light before seven” before he had
to be at work the “more useful, avocation of selling flour.”178 The artist stated, “But belief in
myself did not fail, nor did my ardor flag.”179 Exhaustion and illness caused by work at the mill
and his intense desire to paint at any cost led Tanner’s family to approve his career choice.
This dedication followed Tanner throughout his life, and a few times he became mentally
and physically exhausted, resulting in illness, for his art. His son, Jesse, noted the perseverance
and dedication that his father put into every painting. Each painting was a long labor that took
months because Tanner did not believe he would succeed unless he gave it his very best effort.180
Painting was almost an obsession for Tanner, who was consciousness of the impact of every
brushstroke on the work, and he often he felt that his work was not as well-crafted as others
suggested. Yet his art sustained him through life struggles and became a way to show his
devotion to God. Painting and his relationship with God were the two elements in his life that
provided solace and the ability to weather the hardships of life. As mentioned earlier, his
religious paintings were a way to communicate to viewers the universal message inherent in
Christianity of the interactive relationship with God, but it seems that Tanner’s art is also a
devotion to God’s goodness. The themes that he painted often related to ideas of struggle and
adversity, but the important message for Tanner was that God helps these figures persevere
because of their faith. Daniel and the Lion’s Den, Resurrection of Lazarus, and The Good
Shepherd all demonstrated that God delivered and protected humanity. No matter what the
challenge was that these figures faced, their faith in God and God’s intervention gave them the
ability to survive the impossible.
William R. Lester noted Tanner’s “glow of reverent devotion” and “intensity of spiritual
expression” in his art. He classified the artist as a “practical believer,” who painted “dramatic
portrayals of moving [s]criptural scenes” that were reminiscent “of those earlier days when
immortal masters pictured on the walls or canvas with earnest faith and profound soul
experiences of humanity.”181 Lester discovered Tanner’s faith and spiritual nature in his
paintings, and he could see the artist’s devotion and the depth of his experiences in the painting.
The artist’s devotion was not only suggested in his paintings, but also in his approach to his
work. Tanner was known as one of the hardest workers in the “quarter.”182 A friend of
Tanner’s, when asked about the artist’s working habits, stated that the artist did most of his work
in the morning and that he rose quite early. The interviewer then asked about Tanner’s
afternoons to which the friend replied, “Oh, he works.”183 The artist spent most of his waking
hours on his work, and he only painted three or four paintings a year because of his desire for
them to be perfect. Painting consumed Tanner as well as a want for an accurate depiction. A
French critic, who interviewed Tanner, commented on the artist’s intense approach to painting.
He stated:
Mr. Tanner is a dreamer and a worker. He works diligently and with a good will, but he
produces only two or three canvases a year—“Because I paint laboriously,” he has said
with a charming modesty…He reflects long on the subject, until he has permeated the
spirit of it; he searches out its intimate poetry at the same time carefully studying its
psychological aspect: and even after the general affect has been established he returns to
it again and again, tirelessly seeking to improve it.”184
This commentary showed the dedication and devotion that Tanner had for his painting, but also
the process in which he reflected upon a subject until he understood the essence of it. With this
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understanding, he returned to the subject often to nuance his depiction. His process of studying
and painting his religious themes was the same approach that he hoped his audiences would use
to understand his paintings. He wanted them to return again and again to find the essence of all
his depictions, the relationship between God and human. According to his son, his father’s
favorite remark was “a religious painting is not an excuse for poor painting,” which was
comprehensible because of the effort Tanner placed into his paintings for them to have genuine
religious sentiment as well as well-crafted works. 185 This was the motto he lived by because of
the effort, time, and devotion that he placed into each painting. Michael Brenson, a
contemporary art critic, offered that “there is a sense—both within the paintings and within the
painter—of total devotion to a task or an event or a vision, and an unshakable faith that
something would happen…in Tanner’s work,” it often did.186
Brenson noticed like others before him the devotion of the painter and in the painting and
the basis of these devotions was “unshakable faith” in God. This faith molded Tanner’s choice
of religious themes and radiated off his canvases in the form of visual piety. The artist’s work
was a form of piety because it glorified God at the same time that expressed Tanner’s personal
relationship to God. His images were veneration and an expression of his faith. The artist’s
visual piety was his devotion to his painting and his devotion to God in his paintings. The artist
painted to glimpse the divine as well as express his experiences with God to others. Canvas and
brush were his media for devotion and expression of his mystical consciousness. He showed that
the divine was present and invited the divine to communicate to the viewers of his paintings.
How did his paintings affect others? Did his works communicate the message of divinity and
humanity that he found essential and universal?
I have suggested earlier that the artist wanted to communicate to his viewers the presence
of God and the interactive relationship of the divine and humanity, and he wanted his paintings
to be gateway to this interaction. Tanner aspired for his art to be a place of initial interaction
with God for viewers by depicting the interaction of biblical figures and God that stressed the
ability of God to guide and deliver from adversity. Aura, as defined by Benjamin and Morgan, is
a power that a painting “impresses” upon its viewer of the authenticity of the image and its
message, and it is arguable that Tanner’s paintings contained an aura that had affected viewers
and critics alike.187 Many people have viewed the artist’s works in different time periods yet
reactions to his works often center on the religious emotion and religious experience presented in
the paintings. Religious emotion was remarkable in Tanner’s paintings because his work
contrasted with the lack of emotion present in other art works of the time period. During
Tanner’s career, portraiture was popular in America and Europe, and it was a style of painting
that guaranteed the monetary success of artists. Between 1825-1870, portraiture dominated the
art world in two styles, “blatant realism”, which rivaled photography, and romantic
sentimentality.188 The figures of both of these styles were stiff and often they lacked any form of
emotion, and they were noted for their plainness. Female figures often had a slight smile, but
male figures were painted with harsh realism that did not idealize. One art historian classified
the realism of this time period as an “almost puritanical concentration on fact instead of
fancy.”189 From 1870-1900, portraiture changed slightly with artists usually illustrated the quiet
introspection of the figures. Winslow Homer painted “stoic” confrontations of human and nature
despite the high drama of these situations, and Thomas Eakins, Tanner’s mentor, “concentrated
on portraiture…that would allow him to explore and depict the depths of the human soul in
instrospection—subjects absorbed in their own worlds.”190 For instance, Eakins’s Miss Amelia
van Buren (fig. 9) was a painting in which van Buren sat in quiet reverie engrossed in her own
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thoughts. This young women seemed almost bored as she looked off into what seems to be
empty space, and with her gaze averted, she was unaware of any viewers. Eakins’s goal for this
portrait and similar ones was to examine the “depths of human emotional and psychological
experience,” in which nothing can interrupt the intense concentration of his figures.191
The lack of emotion and the themes of introspection are quite the opposite of Tanner’s
paintings, which were filled with a sense of religious emotion ranging from awe to disbelief to
the artist’s own form of quiet reverie. It is obvious, then, why art critics and viewers of his
paintings constantly mention the emotion that exuded from Tanner’s paintings. The artist’s
illustration of emotion, religious or otherwise, was a different approach to painting the human
figure, and many critics because of the Tanner’s emphasis on the responses of his figures noted
how “human” his figures appeared. This emotion was a reflection of Tanner’s own feelings
toward divinity that he captured on canvas. It was dramatic, and it renewed his faith. His works
mirrored his mysticism and the deep religious feelings that the artist had for God. The emotion
that washed over the audiences of his paintings was his own responses to God: awe, shock,
reverence, and joy. Oscar L. Joseph of The Epworth Herald stated:
He [Tanner] is also expressing his own experiences. What he has seen and heard with
confidence he paints. Hence every picture is instinct with religious emotion. And this is
of such a nature that it thrills also the spectator and rouses within him the faith, hope, and
love which were first kindled in the heart of the artist. If “the end of art is to deepen and
intensify the sense of life,” that purpose is here fully realized.”192
Joseph poetically described his experience with Tanner’s religious paintings that emphasized the
message of faith that the artist wanted to communicate and the religious emotion that exuded
from the canvas. This emotion originated with artist and washed over the spectator. To Joseph,
Tanner not only demonstrated hope and faith, but his art “deepened the sense of life” because of
his display of his personal religious experience and the potential of others to have this awareness.
Another art critic, Elbert Baldwin, felt that in Tanner’s representations of Christ that the figure
first appealed to the viewer as man yet the longer one studied Him the more god-like He
became.193 Baldwin approached the painting as Tanner had intended with reflection and
repeated study to understand the nuance of the subject, and the critic noted that Tanner’s works
had the “accent” of divine inspiration. Baldwin went beyond Joseph’s commentary by
suggesting not only religious feeling but also inspiration from God because of the art’s impact on
the viewer.
Another art critic described his canvases as having a “rich simplicity of color and a quiet
restfulness of mass,” and she also noticed the inspiration or “spell” of the artist’s work.194 She
continued, “Perhaps their strongest charm lies in the fact that their interest increases with time till
[sic] at last in some subtle fashion a very real spell is woven which [one] felt can never be quite
lost again.”195 This critic approached the painting like Baldwin by studying it carefully, and she
was drawn to Tanner’s paintings in an almost magical way because of the artist’s inspiration and
profound demonstrations of humanity and divinity. William E. Barton even commented that the
“French government had thrown off religion,” but even in their irreligious state, they were
buying religion in the form of Tanner’s paintings because of the impact of his work.196 The
French government bought both The Resurrection of Lazarus and Christ at Emmaus, a rare
honor to be bestowed upon an American artist. Tanner was in Jerusalem when Lazarus was
purchased and a friend wrote to him, “Come home, Tanner, to see the crowds before your
44
picture.”197 The veracity of religion could not be denied in Tanner’s works even in the
discussions of his paintings by scholars. Lynda Hartigan classified his paintings as genuinely
spiritual, and that this “spirituality” led to his wide public reception and recognition. She
commented that Tanner “saw his painting as his mission—a culmination rather than an initiation
of a tradition.”198 This scholar pinpointed Tanner’s devotion to his painting and his message,
and she considered it his mission to depict religious truth and essence in his painting. Hartigan
also noticed the spirituality of his work that was deemed a unique element to other critics as well.
The most recent biographer of Tanner described his work as spiritual and even biblical.
Bruce stated that the artist’s paintings are “his autobiography and, more importantly, his Bible.
Each is a testament, a Bible-like chronicle of the struggles, triumph, failures, resources and
revelations of an African-American painter living and working in America and France.”199
Tanner’s work was his own bible as well as a representation of the Bible, and he relied on what
he believed to be the essence of Christianity, the interaction between human and divine, as a way
to depict both. His imagery had power or aura because it depicted the struggles and the joys
humanity faced and presence of God no matter what the situation. Tanner’s paintings had aura
because the viewer could relate to the figures in the paintings and then “see” how the divine
interacted in his/her life as well. Many critics noted the spirituality, and some noted the power of
Tanner’s art that left one spellbound and another with a deeper sense of being, of life. It
appeared that the artist was successful in his desire to show his personal relationship with
divinity and encourage others (through his paintings) to interact with God as well.
Was Henry Tanner a visual mystic? It is necessary to examine the parameters of
mysticism that have been previously provided. First, the artist did have a consciousness of the
divine that led him to express this awareness in his paintings. Tanner felt the presence of God,
and in his work, depicted prophets and ordinary men and women who were aware of “it” as well.
Second, there was a sense of unity between Tanner and God. Tanner revealed this unity in his
art as an interactive relationship between human and God that could be initiated by anyone. The
artist was aware of God’s presence in all of his activities and events in his life, and he believed
that “it was good God who opened the way and gave me good friends, thus filling me with
confidence in the future, which never deserted me in those darkest days.”200 Tanner thought that
God had an active role in his life and guided him through joys and struggles, always by his side.
Next, the artist had a keen sense of the interconnectedness of the world. Tanner believed in a
universal humanity that transcended racial lines and was connected to divinity. A goal of his art
was to show the connection, and he hoped his paintings would help “make the whole world kin.”
His mysticism sprang forth from his desire to connect a disjointed world where racism was
prevalent and a barrier for many including him.
By exhibiting the connections to divinity and to each other, the artist hoped to encourage
his viewers to cross barriers and focus on the humanity that all shared. Fourth, the mystic often
perceived that something is not quite right with the world and often gave this concern some sort
of form, in language or in art. Tanner returned again and again to themes that concerned him and
that he wanted to understand more clearly. He painted his “figures of faith” many times, which
reflected his changing understanding of the world and of God. His original version of Daniel
and the Lion’s Den contained themes of injustice and persecution yet the prophet appeared
hopeful and reassured of his faith in God. Tanner did not understand why some faced adversity
and injustice, and in a later version of Daniel, the prophet appeared weary and resigned to his
fate of death by the lions. It seemed that the artist was more troubled by his surroundings in the
world including war yet God’s presence remained constant in the paintings. The artist was ill at
45
ease in the world, and often, he was alienated. He loved America yet lived in France because of
the racism he confronted when he returned to his native land. He was of African ancestry, which
he was proud of at the same time he coped with prejudice and oppression because of his heritage.
He hoped for support, emotional and monetary, from his people yet he did not want the burden
of creating a canon of racial art. Tanner never quite found his place in the world, but his
paintings reflected how the artist desired the world to be: a place where adversity was overcome
and justice prevailed.
The artist knew there was injustice and oppression in the world, and he found his comfort
in divinity. Thus, his art expressed again and again the ability to overcome almost impossible
adversity because that was how the world should be. Finally, Tanner drew his themes for his
religious paintings from the Bible and his understandings of Christianity, which were influenced
by his A.M.E. background and by the burgeoning spirituality that affected him when he reached
Europe. He was informed by his religious upbringing for his choice of themes. He strove to
make the Bible “real” for his viewers, which would allow them to see for themselves the
presence and interaction of God. It was his devotion to God, his mysticism, which bathed his
paintings in religious emotion. Henry Tanner was a visual mystic because he chose to paint his
consciousness of the divine for others to realize the power and presence of divinity in their lives.
Art was his venue to encourage others that they, too, could interact with divinity like the
biblical prophets he portrayed and the artist himself. His paintings were a combination of his
own personal experience with God, his devotion and piety, and his determination to show others
communication between human and God. The artist was visually pious because he interacted
with his paintings in a mode of veneration for God and to show that divinity existed in even the
most ordinary places. Henry Tanner was a complex man and a complex artist yet his art
contained a simple power and message, the power to demonstrate humanity’s relationship with
divinity and to convince his viewers of this truth. Tanner communicated with brush his personal
experience, universal humanity, and the power of the divine. The spiritual power of his art is
still recognized today, but his son described it best:
A Tanner can do more than give you enjoyment, it can come to your rescue, it can
reaffirm your confidence in man and his destiny, it can help you surmount your
difficulties or console you in your distress. A picture by Tanner is really a part of the
artist himself, a mystic whose visions are deeply personal yet universal in significance.201
46
CONCLUSION
On September 10, 1973, Henry Tanner was commemorated in the form of an eight-cent
stamp. Tanner was picked as one of four artists honored in the American Arts series, and he was
memorialized as a great African-American artist. In 1996, he was honored again with the
placement of his Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City in the Green Room of the White House.
The White House acquired Tanner’s work because there were no representations of AfricanAmerican artists in their art collection. Edward Bell, a retired college administrator, prompted
the selection of this work with a letter because he was disappointed at the lack of black faces in
the collection.202 Tanner’s work was selected, but Bell was slightly unhappy with the White
House’s choice.. Bell stated, “I must admit that my original idea, what I saw in my mind, was a
portrait of a black person…But I am very pleased with the Tanner.”203 Yet again, Tanner was
honored in both of these events because of his race rather than his artistic achievement. Over
100 years after he started his artistic career, the artist was still classified by racial heritage rather
than his talent as an artist, and he still faced criticism for his lack of “blackness.” His landscape
was not quite what some had in mind as representative of African-American art because of the
absence of black figuration. Henry Tanner, it seemed, even when nationally recognized caused
confusion and controversy. His racial heritage or his ambivalence toward this heritage was still
the most important factor in understanding the artist and his work. However, this is an
incomplete approach to understanding the artist and his work because his racial heritage, his
religious background, and his mysticism.
As I have shown, Tanner was influenced by his racial heritage and his religious
background because of the commingling of both in his denominational background. The African
Methodist Episcopal Church formed the lens through which the artist understood and represented
the world. Race was not implicit in Tanner’s religious works, but because of its dialectic
relationship with religion in the artist’s life it informed his choice of biblical themes. The subject
matter of his paintings often resonated with African Americans and other people who faced
oppression and adversity because of his desire to communicate an ability to overcome
challenges. Race and religion were embedded together in the artist’s understanding of the A.M.E
because of the denomination’s reliance on religion to uplift the race and their awareness from
religion that racism should not exist. These two facets were woven into the fabric of the
A.M.E’s founding, its doctrine, theology, and its assertion for equality of all Christians.
The A.M.E. molded Bishop Tanner and Henry Tanner and the way both approached the
world. The bishop preached on social injustice from his pulpit, and the artist chose themes
informed by the blending of race and religion in his background, which is why Tanner relied on
themes of struggle and adversity yet his figures with their unwavering faith in God overcame the
impossible often with divine intervention. Religion and race were interwoven in Tanner’s early
religious experience and shaped his later desires to provide a message in his paintings that made
the “whole world kin.” Tanner’s visual mysticism emerged from his A.M.E. background that
sought justice and his gradual understanding of the connectedness of the universe. His
burgeoning mysticism led him to explore themes that transcended race and demonstrate the
interconnectedness of the world and humanity. His belief was that if he could represent the
47
common humanity of us all and our connections to the divine, then humanity could overcome the
arbitrary divisions of race and the struggles that sprung forth from the divisions. Tanner wanted
his paintings to express this and become a venue for his viewers to experience God in their own
lives and feel the connection between all of humanity. He was a visual mystic, who had a
relationship with God that he expressed with a brush. He enlightened with his canvases that
exuded his own personal experiences as well as the humanness of struggle and joy because
anyone could understand and relate to these facets of life.
Tanner was a complex man and a complex artist. His paintings were informed by
religion and race in his choice of themes. He was also a visual mystic who explored the kinship
of men and women on all races and ethnicities and sought to demonstrate the power of the divine
in human lives. He faced racism and criticism due to his choice of vocation, art, but he
continued his dedication to painting and to God. Henry Ossawa Tanner’s life and art portray the
complex, dialectical relationship between religion and race in the life of a human being, and how
these identities informed his art. This relationship led to Tanner’s depiction of the universal
facets of Christianity in his works because of his desire to escape racial boundaries that he felt
religion could breach and transcend. Tanner was a religious man, a visual mystic, who depicted
the world as he thought it should be: a place were anyone could overcome adversity.
48
FIGURES
Figure 1, Tanner, Henry Ossawa (1859-1937), The Banjo Lesson (1893), Oil on canvas,
49 x 35 ½ in. Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia
49
Figure 2, Tanner, Henry Ossawa (1859-1937), The Thankful Poor (1894), Oil on canvas, 35 x 44
in., Courtesy of the Cosby Collection of Fine Arts.
50
Figure 3, Tanner, Henry Ossawa (1859-1937), Christ and Nicodemus (1899)
Oil on Canvas, 33 11/16 x 39 1/2 in.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Joseph E. Temple Fund
51
Figure 4, Tanner, Henry Ossawa (1859-1937), The Resurrection of Lazarus (1896), Oil on
canvas, 37 3/8 x 47 13/16 in., Musee d’Orsay, Paris
Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY
52
To view image, click on
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/tanner/tanner_annunciation.jpg.html
Figure 5, Tanner, Henry Ossawa (1859-1937), The Annunciation (1898), Oil on canvas, 51 x 71
½ in., Philadelphia Museum of Art, W.P Wilstach Collection
53
Figure 6, Tanner, Henry Ossawa (1859-1937), Daniel and the Lion’s Den (1907-1918), Oil on
paper mounted on canvas, 41 1/8 x 49 7/8 in., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs.
William Preston Harrison Collection, Photograph © 2003 Museum Associates/LACMA
54
Figure 7, Tanner, Henry Ossawa (1859-1937), The Good Shepherd (1902-1903), Oil on canvas,
27 x 32 in., Jane Voorhies Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers,
The State University of New Jersey,
In memory of the deceased members of the class of 1954.
55
Figure 8, Tanner, Henry Ossawa (1859-1937), The Good Shepherd, 1920. Oil on canvas, 32" x
24". Collection of The Newark Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Henry H. Wehrhane, 1929. Inv.:
29.910. Location : The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey © The Newark Museum / Art
Resource, NY
56
Figure 9, Eakins, Thomas, Miss Amelia van Buren (circa 1891), Oil on canvas, 45 x 32 in.,
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
57
APPENDIX A
COPYRIGHT PERMISSION
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
NOTES
1
Paul Richard, “About the Henry Tanner Hangup,” The Washington Post, August 3, 1969,
Henry Ossawa Tanner Papers 1850-1978 (bulk 1890-1920), Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel 107 C2. There was another revival of Tanner’s
art in the early 1990’s with exhibitions and more evaluations and reevaluations of his work that
was still shrouded in controversy.
2
I will often refer to Tanner as a Negro artist because it was the term used for him in his lifetime.
When I refer to more recent scholarship, I will use the term “African American artist.”
3
Albert Boime, “Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” Art Bulletin, v. 75, n. 3, (Sept
1993), 438.
4
Eunice Tietjens was an art critic, who was writing an article on Tanner’s life and career.
Tanner was offended by her reference to his African American heritage as the source of his
artistic talent. The artist fought friends and critics alike through out his life to make them view
his artistic talent without reference to race. Tanner’s draft of his letter to Eunice Tietjens, May
25, 1914, Henry Ossawa Tanner Papers 1850-1978 (bulk 1890-1920), Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel D306 C3.
5
W.E.B. Du Bois, “Criteria of Negro Art,” The Crisis, v. 32, n. 6, (October 1926), 297.
6
Rae Alexander-Minter, “The Tanner Family: a Grandniece’s Chronicle,” in Dewey F. Mosby
and Darrel Sewell, Henry Ossawa Tanner, (New York: Rizzoli, 1991), 33.
7
Dewey F. Mosby, Across Continents and Cultures: The Art and Life of Henry Ossawa Tanner,
(Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1995), 7.
8
For unknown reasons, Naurice Woods, Jr. completed two dissertations on Tanner. The first
dissertation was “The Life and Work of Henry Ossawa Tanner,” which was completed in 1987 at
Columbia Pacific University. “Insuperable Obstacles” was completed in 1993 at The Union
Institute Graduate School.
9
Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 23.
10
There have been additional works on Tanner’s life and art including Walter A. Simon, “Henry
O. Tanner—A Study of the Development of an American Negro Artist: 1859-1937,” Ph.D. diss.,
New York University, 1961 (which is considered the first substantial work on Tanner, but Simon
was mostly concerned with the Negro’s place in America and Tanner as somewhat
representative); Naurice Frank Woods, “Lending Color to Canvas: Henry O. Tanner’s AfricanAmerican Themes,” American Visions, v.6, n.1 (February 1991), 14-20; Albert Boime, “Henry
Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” Art Bulletin, v. 75, n. 3, (Sept 1993), 415-441; Brooks
Adams, “Tanner’s Odyssey,” Art in America, v. 79, n. 6, (June 1991), 108-112, 93; Sharon Kay
Skeel, “Black American in the Paris Salon,” American Heritage, v. 42, n. 1, (February/March
1991), 77-83; Jennifer J. Harper, “The Early Religious Painting of Henry Ossawa Tanner: A
Study of the Influences of Church, Family, and Era,” American Art, v.6, n. 4, (1992), 69-85;
Judith Wilson, “Lifting the ‘Veil’: Henry O. Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful
67
Poor,” in Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998),
199-219. Tanner is also one of the five artists that were discussed in Lynda Roscoe Hartigan,
Sharing Traditions: Five Black Artists in Nineteenth-Century America, (Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 99-116.
11
Benjamin Brawley, The Negro in Art and Literature in the United States, (New York: Duffield
& co., 1918), 105. The same commentary appeared in the 1921 edition, and I chose to cite the
1918 edition instead.
12
Ibid., 4
13
Ibid., 8
14
Alain Locke, “The New Negro,” in The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance, ed.
Alain Locke, (New York: Albert & Charles Boni, Inc., 1925, reprint, New York: Simon &
Schuster Inc., 1997), 14.
15
Ibid., 3.
16
Ibid., 15.
17
Alain Locke, “Legacy of the Ancestral Arts,” in The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem
Renaissance, ed. Alain Locke, (New York: Albert & Charles Boni, Inc., 1925, reprint, New
York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1997), 264.
18
Ibid., 258
19
Ibid., 266
20
Ibid.
21
Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, (New York: Library of America, 1986, reprint, New York:
Vintage Books, 1990)8-9.
22
Ibid., 9.
23
Ibid.
24
W.E.B. Du Bois, “Criteria of Negro Art,” 294. This address was originally given by Du Bois
as a speech for the Chicago Conference of the NAACP. I am assuming in 1926 because the
article did not provide the date, which makes it appear to have occurred in the same year that it
was published.
25
W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Negro in Art,” The Crisis, v. 32 (March 1926): 219, as quoted in
Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, The History of African- American Artists: From 1792 to
the Present, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 121. Du Bois was known to associate art as
strictly propaganda.
26
There is at least two more black genre paintings by Tanner entitled The Ox-Cart and Savings.
Unfortunately, the painting, The Ox-Cart, was undated and the location is unknown. All that
remains is a description by Marcia Matthews, and she describes it as “simply the picture of a
country road, with woods beyond and two Negroes standing near an oxcart.” For its exhibition
history, see Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 137. Savings is located at Spelman College.
27
W.S. Scarborough, “Henry Ossian [sic] Tanner,” Southern Workman, v. 31 (December 1902),
665-666. Scarborough was a friend of Bishop Tanner and the Tanner family. He was also vicepresident of Wilberforce University.
28
Ibid., 666.
29
Stephen W. Angell and Anthony B. Pinn, eds., Social Protest and Thought in the African
Methodist Episcopal Church, (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2000), xv.
30
William Seraile, Fire in His Heart: Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner and the A.M.E. Church,
(Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1998), 7.
68
31
Benjamin Tucker Tanner, An Apology for African Methodism, (Baltimore: 1867), 16, located
at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Documenting the American South Project,
http://docsouth/unc.edu/church/ tanner/tanner.html.
32
Ibid, 78.
33
Ibid., 116.
34
Seraile, Fire in His Heart, 36.
35
Benjamin Tucker Tanner, The Color of Solomon—What?, (Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book
Concern, 1895), 40.
36
Seraile, Fire in His Heart, 36.
37
Marcus Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner: A Spiritual Biography, (New York: The Crossroad
Publishing Company, 2002), 28.
38
Marcia Matthews promoted that Charles Miller took his family to freedom in an oxcart, but it
is believed that she obtained this “sanitized” version from Henry O. Tanner’s son, Jesse. For
Matthews’s discussion, see Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner: American Artist, (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1969 reprint 1994), 6. For discussion of how story became
“sanitized,” see Seraile, Fire in His Heart, 5.
39
Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Sharing Traditions: Five Black Artists in the Nineteenth-Century
America, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 99-100.
40
Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 9-10.
41
Henry Ossawa Papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., as quoted in Matthews,
Henry Ossawa Tanner, 10. Matthews termed Tanner’s scattered, small writings “jottings.”
42
H. O. Tanner, “The Story of an Artist’s Life I” The World’s Work, v.18, n. 2, (June 1909),
1662.
43
Ibid., 11663. The quote is Tanner’s recollection of the taunts of his schoolmates, who
obviously thought his career choice was unacceptable.
44
Ibid.
45
Ibid., 11665. Tanner was deeply affected by Eakins’s advice. He felt that his teacher was
disgusted as well as disappointed by his lack of progress. This advice led Tanner to
painstakingly produce each of his works with a keen awareness of the importance of every
brushstroke.
46
Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 55.
47
Joseph Pennell, The Adventure of an Illustrator, (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1925),
53.
48
Ibid., 54.
49
Ibid.
50
For more on Tanner’s experiences in Atlanta, see Carol G. Crannell Romeyn, “Henry O.
Tanner: Atlanta Interlude,” The Atlanta Historical Journal, v. 27, n. 4, (Winter 1983-984), 2740. Romeyn pointed out that the artist chose Atlanta because it was considered a ‘“progressive”’
Southern city and had many outlets for African American education including Clark University
where Tanner worked for a short time teaching art to mainly faculty members.
51
Tanner, “The Story of an Artist’s Life I,” 11666.
52
H.O. Tanner, “The Story of an Artist’s Life II,” The World’s Work, v. 18, n. 3, (July 1909),
11770.
53
Ibid., 11771.
54
Hartigan, Sharing Traditions, 103.
69
55
Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 69.
F.P. Noble, “The Chicago Congress on Africa,” Our Day, v. 12, (October 1893), 285. The
actual text of Tanner’s speech is lost though Noble’s description at least provided some idea of
what concerned the artist at this point in his life. Tanner created his black genre paintings in
1893 and 1894 and never returned to this style again in his career.
57
W.S. Scarborough, “Henry Ossian [sic] Tanner,” 665-666. For a discussion of the
representation of African Americans in 19th century American art, see Albert Boime, Art of
Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1990).
58
Henry O. Tanner, “An Artist’s Autobiography,” The Advance, 2013 as quoted in Bruce, Henry
Ossawa Tanner, 73.
59
France was not free of racial strife as Tanner purported. For discussion of the French position
on racial matters during Tanner’s stay, see Mosby, Across Continents and Cultures, 8.
60
These paintings were inspired by Tanner’s summer trips to Brittany from 1891 to 1895, and
the works were entitled The Bagpipe Lesson, The Bagpipe Player, and The Young Sabot Maker.
In the 1895 (same year it was created), The Young Sabot Maker was exhibited at the salon and
impressed the critics.
61
Marcia M. Matthews, “Henry Ossawa Tanner, American Artist,” South Atlantic Quarterly, v.
56, n. 4, (Autumn 1966), 465.
62
Tanner, “The Story of an Artist’s Life II,” 11772.
63
Ibid., 11773.
64
Matthews, “Henry Ossawa Tanner, American Artist,” 467.
65
Helen Cole, “Henry O. Tanner, Painter,” Brush and Pencil, v. 6, n. 3, (June 1900), 105-106.
Other articles in which Tanner’s racial heritage is discussed, see Elbert Francis Baldwin, “A
Negro Artist of Unique Power,” The Outlook, v. 64, 793-796.
66
Anonymous, “An Afro-American Painter Who Has Become Famous In Paris,” Current
Literature, v. 45, n. 4, (October 1908), 405.
67
There are many clippings from the French presses in the Henry Ossawa Tanner papers that
classified Tanner as an American painters. One in particular is from the Salon de la Sociéte des
Artistes Français dated April 30, 1908, which describes Tanner as “un américain.” This clipping
is located in the Henry Ossawa Tanner papers 1850-1978 (bulk 1890-1920), Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel D 307.
68
Anonymous, “An Afro-American Painter,” 405.
69
Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 141. For another description of Tanner’s war experience, see
Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 153-174.
70
Ibid., 146 and Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 206.
71
Ibid., 162.
72
Letter to Raymond Alexander, May 1927, Alexander Papers relating to Henry Ossawa Tanner
1912-1985, owned by the University of Pennsylvania Archives, microfilmed by Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel 4399.
73
James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan, (Salem: Ayer Company, 1990), 279, as quoted in
Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 163.
74
“Henry Tanner, 77, Dies in Paris; Was American Negro Painter,” The New York Tribune,
Henry Ossawa Tanner Papers 1850-1978 (bulk 1890-1920), Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C, reel D306 C3. The article commented on Tanner’s
56
70
“natural timidity” with racial issues though “he was interested in racial questions.” Once again,
Tanner was classified by race rather than his work though this article examines the depth of
religious feeling in his paintings.
75
Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 15.
76
Mosby, Across Continents and Cultures, 7.
77
Daniel A. Payne, The Semi-Centenary and Retrospection of the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, (Baltimore: Sherwood & Co., 1866, reprint, Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press,
1972), 20.
78
James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United
States and South Africa, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 10.
79
Ibid.
80
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Negro Church, (Atlanta: The Atlanta University Press, 1903, reprint
New York: Octagon Books, 1968), 123
81
Daniel Payne, “Education in the A.M.E. Church,” in African American Religious History: A
Documentary Witness, ed. Milton C. Sernett, 2nd ed., (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999),
263
82
“First Educational Convention” in Daniel A. Payne, The Semi-Centenary and Retrospection of
the African Methodist Episcopal Church, (Baltimore: Sherwood & Co., 1866, reprint, Freeport,
NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1972), 69. Emphasis original. The names of the central
committee members are Daniel A. Payne, Henry C. Turner, Thos. W. Henry, Adams S. Driver,
James A. Shorter, John Henson, and Daniel W. Moore. Those listed above were responsible for
the preamble and resolutions for the A.M.E.’s position on education.
83
Seraile, Fire in His Heart, xi.
84
Henry Tanner’s draft of letter to Eunice Tietjens, May 25, 1914, Henry Ossawa Tanner papers
1850-1978 (bulk 189-1920), Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington,
D.C., reel D306, C3. Author’s emphasis.
85
Seraile, Fire in His Heart, 176.
86
William R. Lester, “Henry O. Tanner, Exile for Art’s Sake,” Alexander’s Magazine, v. 7, n.2,
(December 15, 1908), 69-73, 70. See also Elbert Francis Baldwin, “A Negro Artist of Unique
Power,” Outlook, v. 64, 793-796, 793, Tanner was described as having “[N]egro blood” and that
he “does not resemble a too-often-accepted type” because there only “hints of African descent.”
87
Anonymous, “An Afro-American Painter,”, 405. The author also suggested that Tanner
should be considered only as a great American painter despite his/her initial racial distinctions
and qualifications.
88
Washington was quoted in Anonymous, “An Afro-American Painter,” 405.
89
Matthews, “Henry Ossawa Tanner, American Artist,” 470.
90
Noble, “Chicago Congress on Africa,” 285
91
Albert Boime, “Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” 419.
92
Ibid.
93
W.E.B. Du Bois, “Tanner,” The Crisis, v. 28, n. 1, (May 1924), 12.
94
Ibid. Du Bois stated that he mumbled apologies for Tanner’s lack of support when he knew
there was no reason for it. He wrote, “We are poor (‘We own 100,000 automobiles,’ said my
soul); we have not yet come to appreciate art (‘We are the only American artists,’ murmured my
mind); we are not sufficiently familiar with your work. (‘Tanner is the perennial essay subject’
71
remarked my sinking heart): In fact it was simply are muddling carelessness. Who of us buys
even books, much less pictures?”
95
Letter to Raymond Alexander, May 1927, Alexander Papers relating to Henry Ossawa Tanner
1912-1985, owned by the University of Pennsylvania Archives, microfilmed by Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel 4399.
96
See Albert Boime, “Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” Art Bulletin, v. 75, n. 3,
(Sept 1993), 415-441 and Judith Wilson, “Lifting the ‘Veil’: Henry O. Tanner’s The Banjo
Lesson and The Thankful Poor,” in Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings,
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 199-219. Also, Naurice Frank Woods, “Lending Color to
Canvas: Henry O. Tanner’s African-American Themes,” American Visions, v.6, n.1 (February
1991), 14-20.
97
Wilson, “Lifting the ‘Veil,’” 207.
98
Boime, “Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” 423.
99
Campbell, Songs of Zion, 39.
100
Boime, “Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” 424.
101
Campbell, Songs of Zion, 39.
102
Statement in Tanner’s handwriting, undated, Files, Pennsylvania School for the Deaf,
Philadelphia, as quoted in Mosby, Across Continents and Cultures, 31.
103
Wilson, “Lifting the Veil,’” 214.
104
Scarborough, “Henry Ossian[sic] Tanner,” 666.
105
Ibid.
106
Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Sharing Traditions: Five Black Artists in Nineteenth-Century
America, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 106.
107
Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 101.
108
Ibid.
109
Bearden and Henderson, The History of African American Artists, 90.
110
Quoted in Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 120.
111
Scarborough, “Henry Ossian[sic] Tanner,” 666.
112
William H. Burgess, “The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City,” in The Art of Henry
Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), (Washington, D.C.: The Museum of African Art/Frederick
Douglass Institute, 1969), 7.
113
Scarborough, “Henry Ossian [sic] Tanner,” 670.
114
Vincent L.Wimbush, “Reading Darkness, Reading Scriptures” in African Americans and the
Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures, ed. Vincent Wimbush, (New York: Continuum, 2001),
1-43, 18. Wimbush proposed that a new form of biblical exegesis was needed to understand the
African American experience of the Bible because of the creative engagement that the group had
with the text to define themselves and understand the world around them that oppressed and
marginalized the group. Thus, he proposed reading the Bible with “darkness” because the
“neutral” Biblical exegesis can only be practiced by “dominants.” The neutrality does not exist.
115
Ibid., 17.
116
All of the following scholars note that Tanner’s shift to religious paintings did not mean that
he was casting aside his racial identity, but he found a new way to communicate this identity
using his religious themes. See Dewey F. Mosby, Across Continents and Cultures: The Art and
Life of Henry Ossawa Tanner, (1995), 1-40 and Mosby “Paris, Racial Awareness, and Success:
1891-1897,” in Mosby and Darrel Sewell, Henry Ossawa Tanner, (New York: Rizzoli, 1996),
72
86-146; Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of African American Artists: From
1792 to the Present, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 95-110; Albert Boime, “Henry Ossawa
Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” The Art Bulletin, v. 75, n. 3, (September 1993), 415-441; and
Jennifer Harper, “The Early Religious Paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner: A Study of Influences
of Church, Family, and Era” American Art, (Fall 1992), 69-85.
117
Dewey F. Mosby, “Paris, Racial Awareness, and Success: 1891-1897,” 135. James Scott
proposed the idea of hidden transcripts as a method that oppressed peoples use to express their
resistance. It seems to apply to Mosby’s characterization of Tanner’s use of subtext as a way to
communicate with African Americans yet still make his paintings marketable to white buyers.
Bearden and Henderson actually see the exhange between Christ and Nicodemus as parallel the
secret exchange between abolitionists, which converted slaves the cause of abolitionism. It is
important to note that this painting is often associated with the secrecy involved with slavery and
religion. See Bearden and Henderson, A History of African American Artists, 95. See James C.
Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1990), 1-16. In his first chapter, Scott explored how oppressed people expressed their
autonomy and his theory was through a hidden transcript that was communicable to others in the
same positions. To apply, Scott’s ideas to Tanner’s work, I think, would demonstrate that
Tanner was expressing racial subtexts of struggle, oppression, and to African Americans who
experienced these things in their history. This argument would actually enhance the subtext that
Mosby and others suggest is apparent.
118
Albert Boime, “Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” 438.
119
Unfortunately, this version of Tanner’s Daniel and the second version have both been lost.
His third version created in 1916 still exists and is located at the Los Angeles County Museum of
Arts. Interestingly in the 1916 painting, Daniel no longer tilts his head upward instead it is
facing down in a stance of almost defeat. Marcus Bruce has suggested that Tanner identified
with Daniel, and this last painting was created in a time in Tanner’s life that was full of struggle
and heartache, which appears to be represented in the figure of Daniel.
120
Daniel 6: 4-15.
121
Daniel 6:27.
122
Cole, “Henry O. Tanner, Painter,” 100.
123
Elbert Francis Baldwin, “A Negro Artist of Unique Power,” 793.
124
Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 111.
125
Mosby, Across Continents and Cultures, 37-38.
126
Mosby, “Paris, Racial Awareness, and Success: 1891-1897,” 95.
127
Dewey F. Mosby, “Catalogue,” in Mosby and Sewell, Henry Ossawa Tanner, (New York:
Rizzoli International, 1991), 136.
128
Boime, “Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” 432.
129
Harper, “The Early Religious Paintings,” 74.
130
Scarborough, “Henry Ossian [sic] Tanner,” 666.
131
Kristin Schwain, “Figuring Belief”, Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2001, 25.
132
Ibid., 32.
133
Jessie Fauset, “Henry Ossawa Tanner,” The Crisis, v. 27, n. 6, (April 1924), 258. Fauset
quoted Tanner, and the remaining of the quotes referring to the story in this paragraph are also
from this article.
73
134
Leigh Eric Schmidt has an engaging discussion of mysticism, which he concluded was a
“religious invention” of liberals because of the variety of definitions and baggage that is attached
to the term. Schmidt also provides a detailed historiography of the progression/regression of the
term; see Leigh Eric Schmidt, “The Making of Modern ‘Mysticism,’” The Journal of the
American Academy of Religion, v. 71, n. 2, (June 2003), 273-302.
135
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1985), 302-303. Varieties is composed of 20 lectures that were delivered as the Gifford
Lectures on Natural Religion in 1901 and 1902.
136
Ibid., 316.
137
Hal Bridges, American Mysticism: From William James to Zen, (New York: Harper & Row,
1970),14.
138
Ibid., 4.
139
Janet K. Ruffing, ed., Mysticism and Social Transformation, (Syracuse: Syracuse University,
2001), 7. Ruffing discussed McGinn as the scholar, who continues to redefine what he means by
mysticism. Currently, McGinn preferred to think of the relationship between the divine and the
mystic as a matter of consciousness rather than experience.
140
Bruno Borchert, Mysticism: Its History and Its Challenge, (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser,
Inc., 1994), 3.
141
Ibid., 16-17. Borchert pointed to several artists who returned again and again to subjects to
make sense of them and resolve the inner tension. Cézanne returned to Mont Sainte-Victoire
twenty times, and Mondrian painted the same tree “tens of times over many years.”
142
Jesse Ossawa Tanner’s letter to Marcia M. Matthews, February 12, 1966, Marcia M. Mathews
papers relating to Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1937-1969 (bulk 1963-1969), Archives of American
Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel 64.
143
Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 73.
144
Ibid., 73.
145
Another one of Tanner’s jottings that Matthews discovered in her research, and it was quoted
in Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 73.
146
Stephen Gottschalk, The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life,
(Berkley: The University of California Press, 1973), 27.
147
Mary Baker Eddy quoted in Caroline Fraser, God’s Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the
Christian Science Church, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1999), 59.
148
Ibid., 155.
149
Eddy’s interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer is “Our Father-Mother God, all harmonious,
Adorable One, Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present. Enable us to know,--as in heaven,
so in earth,--God is omnipotent, supreme. Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections;
And Love is reflected in love; And God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from
sin, disease, and death. For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.”
Erwin D. Canham, Commitment to Freedom: The Story of the Christian Science Monitor,
(Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin company, 1958), 7, quoted in Fraser, God’s Perfect Child,
158.
150
Jesse Ossawa Tanner, “Introduction,” in Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, xiii.
151
Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 15.
152
H. O. Tanner, “The Artist’s Autobiography,” The Advance, 2014, quoted in Bruce, Henry
Ossawa Tanner, 120.
74
153
Tanner, “The Story of an Artist’s Life II,” 11775.
Henry O. Tanner, “Effort,” statement published in “Exhibition of Religious Paintings by H.O.
Tanner,” checklist of an exhibition at Grand Central Art Galleries, New York , 1924, n.p. as
quoted in Hartigan, Sharing Traditions, 106-107.
155
Cole, “Henry O. Tanner, Painter,” 101-102.
156
Michael Brenson, “For Tanner, Light Was Love,” New York Times, February 17, 1991, 33.
157
Tanner, “The Story of an Artist’s Life II,” 11775.
158
Hildegard of Bingen, “Love Overflows into All Things,” in Mystics, Visionaries, and
Prophets: A Historical Anthology of Women’s Spiritual Writings, ed. Shawn Madigan,
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 98.
159
Ibid., 100.
160
Ibid., 98.
161
St. John of the Cross, Counsels of Light and Love, introduction by Thomas Merton, (New
York: Paulist Press, 1935, reprint, 1977), 59. The title of his work even referred to light. St.
John of the Cross continually contrasted light to dark not just in terms of describing God. He
defined actions in the terms of light and dark, good and bad.
162
Frank Tobin, “Introduction,” in Mechtchild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the
Godhead, trans. Frank Tobin, (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), 11.
163
St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, trans.
John Clarke, (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1975), 49.
164
Ibid., 98.
165
Fraser, God’s Perfect Child, 14.
166
Helen W. Bingham Reminiscences, Archives of the Mother Church , Boston, Mass., as
quoted in Gottschalk, The Emergence of Christian Science, 29.
167
Mary Baker Eddy, Retrospection and Introspection, 1892, 23, quoted in Gottschalk, The
Emergence of Christian Science, 31.
168
Jesse Ossawa Tanner’s letter to Marcia M. Matthews, February 12, 1966, Marcia M. Mathews
papers relating to Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1937-1969 (bulk 1963-1969), Archives of American
Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel 64.
169
Harper, “The Early Religious Paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner,” 75. See also Bruce, Henry
Ossawa Tanner, 145;
170
John 10:11. The complete parable is John 10:1-18.
171
John 10: 14, 16.
172
Jesse Ossawa Tanner, “Introduction,” in Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, xiii. Emphasis
original.
173
David Morgan, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images, (Berkley:
University of California Press, 1998), 3.
174
Ibid., 31.
175
Ibid.
176
David Morgan, Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American
Mass Production. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4. Morgan reiterated and added to
what he considered “crucial insights” from Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction” (1936).
177
Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 169.
178
Tanner, “The Story of an Artist’s Life,” 11664.
154
75
179
Ibid.
Jesse Ossawa Tanner’s letter to Marcia M. Matthews, February 12, 1966, Marcia M. Mathews
papers relating to Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1937-1969 (bulk 1963-1969), Archives of American
Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel 64.
181
William R. Lester, “Henry O. Tanner: Exile for Art’s Sake,” Alexander’s Magazine, v. 7, n. 2,
(December 15, 1908), 72.
182
The nickname for the area in which his studio was located.
183
Cole, “Henry O. Tanner,” 104. Unknown friend quoted by Cole.
184
Anonymous, “An Afro-American Painter,” 406. The translation of the unknown French
critic’s commentary on Tanner appeared in this article.
185
Jesse Ossawa Tanner’s letter to Marcia M. Matthews, February 12, 1966, Marcia M. Mathews
papers relating to Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1937-1969 (bulk 1963-1969), Archives of American
Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel 64.
186
Brenson, “For Tanner, Light was Love,” 35.
187
Unfortunately, I do not have the average viewer’s commentary on Tanner’s paintings, but I do
have commentary from art critics from Tanner’s time period as well as discussions of his work
by more contemporary critics. I will rely on this data to draw conclusions on whether Tanner
achieved his goal.
188
Wayne Craven, American Art: History and Culture, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.,
1994), 233.
189
Frederick Hartt, Art: A History of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, 2nd ed., (New York:
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1985), 823.
190
Craven, American Art, 341.
191
Ibid.
192
Oscar L. Joseph, “Henry O. Tanner’s Religious Paintings,” The Epworth Herald, March 6,
1909, 1042-1043, located in Henry Ossawa Tanner Papers, Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel D307.
193
Baldwin, “A Negro Artist of Unique Power,” 793.
194
Draft of Eunice Tietjens’s article on Henry Tanner, 1914, located in Henry Ossawa Tanner
papers 1850-1978 (bulk 1890-1920), Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C., reel D 307.
195
Ibid.
196
William E. Barton, “An American Painter of the Resurrection: Henry Ossawa Tanner,” The
Advance, (March 20, 1913), 2011, located in the Henry Ossawa Tanner papers, Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel D 307.
197
Tanner, “The Story of an Artist’s Life I,” 11773.
198
Hartigan, Sharing Traditions, 114.
199
Bruce, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 15.
200
Tanner, “The Story of an Artist’s Life I,” 11664.
201
Jesse Ossawa Tanner, “Introduction” in Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, xii-xiii.
202
Karen De Witt, “A Quiet Landscape Gets a Famous Home,” The New York Times, v. 146,
(January 5, 1997), H40.
203
Bell quoted in De Witt, “A Quiet Landscape,” H40.
180
76
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Kelly J. Baker was born in Marianna, Florida in August of 1980. She received an A.A. from
Chipola College and a B.A. in American Studies from Florida State University. Her M.A is also
from Florida State University in American Religious History. She currently resides in
Tallahassee, Florida with her husband, Chris, and her two dogs and a cat. She has written
articles for The Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Trans-Atlantic World,
Encyclopedia of African Atlantic Relations, The Handbook for the Study of Religion, The World
of Frederick Douglass, and Encyclopedia of Protestantism. She has reviewed books for the
Journal of American Culture, the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, and American
Studies International.
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