American Art Collaborative

Henry Ossawa Tanner used the local people as models in his religious paintings during his trips to the Middle East and North Africa. He may have used this portrait for the figure of Nicodemus in Nicodemus Visiting Jesus, painted in Jerusalem in 1898. This old but dignified man made quite an impression on Tanner, who later wrote, “I still remember with pleasure the fine head of the old Yemenite Jew who posed for Nicodemus.