American Art Collaborative

Henry Ossawa Tanner is regarded as one of the most distinguished African American painters. He received his training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia under Thomas Eakins and at the Académie Julian in Paris. After 1895, he lived in Paris and painted religious works inspired by his travels in the Holy Land. Tanner produced few portraits and only a couple of these were sculptures. The bust is slightly less than life size and this, combined with its slightly rough finish, suggest that it is a study for another, more finished, piece. Represented here is the artist's father, Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1835-1923), a distinguished cleric in the African American Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church. In 1866, the senior Tanner was pastor at the Bethel A.M.E. Church in Baltimore, and later he served in Frederick, Maryland. Twenty years later, he became a bishop in Kansas City. Bishop Tanner was also a writer and poet and published books pertaining to the A.M.E. Church.