Description
Black American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) was a trailblazing artist of religious subjects at the turn of the last century. After training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts under the tutelage of Thomas Eakins, Tanner traveled to France in 1891 and, finding French society more race blind than the United States, he stayed. His chosen subject: the New Testament, came easily to him–his father was a bishop in the African Medodist Episcopal Church and his childhood had been steeped in the Christian faith. Tanner lived long enough to be an inspiration to painters in the Harlem Renaissance movement. Today, his paintings are prized by American art museums.
