On this day in 1973, the United States Postal Service honored artist Henry Ossawa Tanner and his influence with a stamp.
Listed as part of its Black Heritage series, the stamp was the eighth released and was made available more than 33 years after the first stamp was issued.
First issued in 1940 to commemorate Booker T. Washington, the Black Heritage stamp series recognized the impact of several Black American figures on U.S. history.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1859, Tanner is recognized as the first Black painter to gain international renown.
One of five children, he was born to a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Reverend Benjamin Tucker Tanner, and Sarah Tanner, a woman who escaped enslavement through the Underground Railroad.
After seeing a painter create a landscape portrait at Fairmount Park, Tanner chose to pursue art professionally. Although many white artists rejected him and denied him the chance to apprentice because of racism, he was accepted into the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1879.
Considered the oldest active art museum in the U.S., the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts was the only place where he was accepted as a Black student. While there, he studied under Thomas Eakins, a realist painter considered a pivotal figure in American art.
Over the next ten years, Tanner began showing his work at the Academy and at the Philadelphia Society of Artists. Created primarily in oil, his paintings revolved around biblical stories and symbolism.
Amongst Tanner’s most famous works are “The Good Shepherd” and “Christ Walking on the Water.”
After a brief attempt at his own photography studio, he met bishop Joseph Crane Hartzell, a figure who would help him immensely with his career. Hartzell eventually funded Tanner’s work in Cincinnati. Although none of the paintings were sold, he and his wife purchased all of Tanner’s work, funding his studies in Europe for a time.
By 1891, Tanner studied alongside several artists, including Jean-Joseph Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens, at the Académie Julian. While in Paris, he gained critical acclaim and respect within the art world. After his paintings were exhibited at the Paris Salon, Tanner was awarded a prize for “Daniel in the Lions’ Den,” becoming one of the few American artists to be recognized by the Paris Salon. The French government eventually bought the painting.
Over the next few years, Tanner’s popularity continued to grow internationally, and by 1900 he won the PAFA’s Lippincott Prize as well as an award from the Universal Exposition. For his paintings, he was also named an associate member of the National Academy of Design and became a full member in 1927. Through becoming a full member, he became the first Black artist to do so.
Throughout his career, Tanner’s work toured primarily across Paris and the United States.
Although he mainly lived in France, he was actively involved in the fight for equality in the U.S. In 1893, he delivered a paper at the World’s Congress on Africa, discussing his influences on depicting Black subjects in paintings such as “The Banjo Lesson.”
Tanner also maintained close ties with Booker T. Washington and painted his portrait. He was also an early supporter of the NAACP, regularly contributing to the organization after it was founded in 1910.
During World War I, Tanner’s creativity was put on pause when he joined the American Red Cross, severely depressed by the onset of the war. For his work within the Red Cross, Tanner was named a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in France.
After his break from the art world, he no longer enjoyed the same success as earlier in his career, and in 1937, Tanner passed away in Paris at age 77.
By 1969, there was renewed interest in his work; however, this followed the Smithsonian Institution’s decision to exhibit it.
The display was considered the first major solo exhibit of a Black artist in the U.S. and reinvigorated interest in his work, nearly 32 years after his death.
