Henry Ossawa Tanner

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) was born in Pittsburgh, the son of a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and grew up in Philadelphia. In 1879 he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts as its only Black student and became one of Thomas Eakins's favourite pupils. In 1891 he went to Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian and with Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens, and apart from brief visits home he spent the rest of his life in France. He was the first African-American painter to gain international acclaim. After The Banjo Lesson of 1893 he turned mainly to biblical subjects, and The Resurrection of Lazarus was bought by the French government after winning a medal at the 1897 Salon. The patron Rodman Wanamaker then paid for him to travel through Palestine and North Africa to see the settings of scripture for himself. Light often carries meaning in his work: in The Annunciation, Gabriel appears as a column of light. In 1923 France made him a knight of the Legion of Honour. Two works here: The Annunciation and The Miraculous Haul of Fishes.