Henry Ossawa TANNER (1859 - 1937) Brittany, mother... Lot 42

Henry Ossawa TANNER (1859 - 1937) Brittany, mother and child on the road Oil on canvas, signed lower left 35 x 55.5 cm Initially self-taught, Henry Ossawa Tanner entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1879, where his teacher was Thomas Eakins. He was the only African-American student. In 1891, he moved to Paris to study at the Académie Julian. Quickly accepted into French artistic circles, he worked with many of his contemporaries. He joined the American Art Students Club in Paris, as well as the Étaples art colony, dividing his time between his Paris studio on rue de Fleurus and the Côte d'Opale. His painting "Daniel dans la fosse aux lions" was shown at the 1896 Paris Salon. The following year, the French government purchased La Résurrection de Lazare (The Resurrection of Lazarus), exhibited at the 1897 Salon (the painting is now in the Musée d'Orsay). He gained international renown for his landscape and religious paintings. He also painted many views of Paris, such as The Arch (1919), depicting the Arc de Triomphe, on display at the Brooklyn Museum. During the First World War, Tanner produced several works for the Red Cross. In 1923, he was made an Honorary Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honor. In 1927, he was the first African-American artist elected to the American Academy of Fine Arts. ... He died in Paris in 1937 and is buried in the Sceaux cemetery, near Paris. Henry Ossawa Tanner was the first African-American artist of worldwide renown. In 1995, Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City, a landscape painted in 1886, became the first work by an African-American artist to enter the permanent collections of the White House.