Henry Ossawa Tanner: Race, Religion, and Visual Mysticism Kelly Jeannette Baker
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2003 Henry Ossawa Tanner: Race, Religion, and Visual Mysticism Kelly Jeannette Baker Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES HENRY OSSAWA TANNER: RACE, RELIGION, AND VISUAL MYSTICISM By KELLY J. BAKER A Thesis submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2003 The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Kelly J. Baker defended on September 10, 2003. John Corrigan Professor Directing Thesis Amanda Porterfield Committee Member Amy Koehlinger Committee Member Approved: John Kelsay, Chair, Department of Religion Donald J. Foss, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii To my mother and my husband Chris, without them my work would not be possible. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all the wonderful people, who helped me through this creative process. The Department of Religion faculty has been increasingly helpful through discussions, lectures, and quiet prodding to different sources and theories. Dr. John Corrigan guided me into this project, and his questions and suggestions made my text better and more thoughtful. My colleagues in the American Religious History track have listened to my ideas about Tanner for several semesters, and they clarified my concerns and provoked great discussion. Heather Nicholson gave poignant suggestions to my project, and she pointed to more than one text, which proved beneficial. Michael Pasquier and Howell Williams provided insight, but more importantly, we struggled through this process together supporting and learning from one another along the way. Thanks to the Florida State Library Interlibrary Loan and the Smithsonian American Art Archives, their help was crucial in tracking down often-obscure sources. Louise Ann Bayley of the Smithsonian was particularly helpful with my requests. I also greatly appreciate the museums and collections that allowed me to reproduce images of Tanner’s paintings. These institutions and people are the Phillips Collection, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The Newark Museum, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Hampton University, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art Resource, and the Musee d’Orsay. Finally, my husband deserves thanks because he listened to my frustrations, proofed my thesis, and supported the merit of my project. Hannah, Sophie, and Belle proved to be more distracting than helpful, but their furry energy revived me more than once. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ...................................................................................................... vi Abstract ............................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1 1. HENRY OSSAWA TANNER, LIFE ............................................................. 10 2. HENRY OSSAWA TANNER, WORK ......................................................... 18 3. VISUAL MYSTICISM ................................................................................... 32 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 47 FIGURES ............................................................................................................. 49 APPENDIX A....................................................................................................... 58 NOTES ................................................................................................................. 67 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................ 77 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ............................................................................... 84 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1, Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson (1893) ................................ 49 Figure 2, Tanner, The Thankful Poor (1894), .......................................................50 Figure 3, Tanner, Christ and Nicodemus (1899) ................................................. 51 Figure 4, Tanner, The Resurrection of Lazarus (1897) ........................................ 52 Figure 5, Tanner, The Annunciation (1898) ......................................................... 53 Figure 6, Tanner, Daniel and the Lion’s Den (1916) ........................................... 54 Figure 7, Tanner, The Good Shepherd (1902-1903)............................................. 55 Figure 8, Tanner, The Good Shepherd: Lost Sheep (1922) .................................. 56 Figure 9, Thomas Eakins, Miss Amelia van Buren (1886-91).............................. 57 vi ABSTRACT According to some scholars, religion is inseparable from the African-American experience. Others viewed race as almost a separate ontological category from religion. How can it be possible for scholars to view the relationship between race and religion so differently? “Henry Ossawa Tanner: Race, Religion, and Visual Mysticism” seeks to understand the complex relationship between religion and race and to explore Tanner’s visual mysticism by examining his life and paintings. Tanner was an African-American artist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose body of work consisted of landscapes, genre paintings, and religious narratives. It will be argued that he considered his religious paintings to be his most important work. The case of Henry Ossawa Tanner, his life and art, demonstrates the dialectical relationship between race and religion. These two identities were in conversation with each other in his life and in his art. Tanner was shaped by his African Methodist Episcopal background, which provided the religious lens through which he viewed life and drew inspiration for his art. Tanner also faced racism, because he was an African-American artist in the time period when to be such was an anomaly, and criticism from his peers because he chose to paint religious themes instead of racial ones. Despite criticism, Tanner remained devoted to his religious works, and many proposed that Tanner was a mystic. This thesis will promote that Tanner was not only a mystic but also a visual mystic by painting on canvas his religious experience and its universal elements. The artist hoped to communicate religious experience to the viewers of his paintings, and he desired to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the world and the interaction between divinity and humanity. For Tanner, painting was a way to connect to viewers, but it was also an act of religious devotion the moment his brush touched the canvas. vii INTRODUCTION In 1969, there was a revival and reevaluation of the Henry Ossawa Tanner’s art. Previous art historians had largely ignored the artist, who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The controversy over Tanner’s art and life fascinated and frustrated scholars and public intellectuals as the artist and his work had confounded those of his own period. One journalist classified the obsession and frustration with the artist “The Henry Tanner Hangup,”1 and a major component of this “hangup” was how to classify the artist and his work. This particular journalist was offended by the lack of “blackness” in Tanner’s art, a sensitivity that pinpointed where much of the confusion over the artist was derived. The artist was an African American who primarily painted biblical scenes with Jewish figuration. The revival of Tanner’s art was a part of the cultural revival for African Americans, who were redefining the terms of their own “blackness” and seeking to uncover a history of their people that had been ignored and neglected. Of course, Henry Ossawa Tanner was part of this history, but he did not fit the mold some were seeking. The artist was conflicted about his racial heritage, and his work centered mainly on religious themes rather than racial ones. His work became problematic and difficult to categorize. Many had views similar to the aforementioned journalist, thinking that Tanner ignored his racial heritage, and some focused on the importance of Tanner as a lineage for African American artists, and on his perseverance, which allowed him to cross racial barriers and achieve international acclaim. Many labels have been attached to Tanner including Negro artist, race traitor, American artist, a Romantic Realist, religious mystic, and a painter of biblical scenes. The body of his work ranges from seascapes to landscapes to black genre to the grand religious paintings that compose the majority of his œuvre. The white press and academy initially labeled Tanner as a “Negro” artist based on his race rather than his work, which offended the artist because his artistic merit was ignored in favor of his racial heritage.2 However, African American intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Alain Locke agreed with the label of “Negro artist” for Tanner, but for different and complicated reasons. Tanner was the first African American painter of international acclaim, and during his time period, he was thought to be one of the greatest painters America had produced. Thus for black intellectuals, he became representative of the