These trips were made in order to familiarize himself with the topography and appearance of people there, thus increasing the visual appeal of his biblical subjects by scrupulous attention to original settings and naturalistic details. The following year, thanks to the financial backing of his lifelong friend and supporter Rodman Wanamaker (of the Philadelphia retail firm by the same name), Tanner embarked on the first of several long trips to the Middle East. After Daniel in the Lions’ Den (1895, location unknown) won honorable mention in the 1896 Salon, Tanner began to enjoy increased recognition, and museums started to acquire his paintings. He abandoned genre works focusing on Black subjects and began painting the biblical scenes for which he became best known. His concern during this period for creating dignified and sympathetic portrayals of Black people in art is exemplified by The Banjo Lesson (1893, Hampton University Museum, Virginia).Īfter returning to Paris in 1894 one of Tanner’s paintings was accepted for exhibition at that year’s Salon. Tanner’s choice of subject matter was influenced by a growing consciousness of his racial identity, and during a trip to the United States in 1893 he delivered a paper entitled “The American Negro in Art” at the World’s Congress on Africa in Chicago. Tanner soon joined the American Art Students’ Club and spent his first summer in France with the colony of artists at Pont-Aven, Brittany. In 1891 Tanner proceeded to Paris and commenced study under Jean-Joseph Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian. In 1890 Hartzell organized an exhibition of Tanner’s work in Cincinnati, and when none of the paintings sold he and his wife purchased them, thus providing Tanner with adequate finances for a period of study in Europe. Although this venture failed, it was there that the young artist met a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church named Joseph Crane Hartzell, who arranged for him to teach drawing at Clark University. In 1889 he established a photography studio in Atlanta, Georgia. He began to exhibit at the Academy and at the Philadelphia Society of Artists. The family settled in Philadelphia in 1868, and in 1879 Tanner enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied under the direction of Thomas Eakins. Their son’s unusual middle name was derived from the name of the town Osawatomie, Kansas, where the abolitionist John Brown had initiated his antislavery campaign. I also appreciate that there is minimal equipment required and respect that the work is always a collaboration.Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in Pittsburgh in 1859, the first of five children born to Reverend Benjamin Tucker Tanner, a future bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Sarah Tanner, a woman who had escaped her enslavers via the Underground Railroad. I am attracted to the hands-on connection with various species of plant and fish-there’s such variety of form and texture. I primarily work with gyotaku because it fits well with my interest in printmaking and my interest in nature. I have modified a selection of gyotaku to canvas with the intent of creating variation and immediacy through composition. In other cases I have chosen to print invasive species. In some instances the fish is cleaned after printing and prepared to be eaten. Using non-toxic ink the fish is printed on traditional Japanese rice paper or cotton. My aim is to approach the gyotaku in a sustainable and respectful manner. It was a method for recording a fisher's catch. Gyotaku is the traditional method of printing fish, originating from Japan in the 1800's. My current work with gyotaku looks at human relationships with fish from cultural, symbolic and ecological perspectives.
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