In Dialogue: Henry Ossawa Tanner, Mentor and Muse

The African American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859 – 1937) left the United States in 1891 for Europe to escape prejudice and continue his training as an artist. Settling in Paris and later on the French coast, he won international fame for his genre scenes, his depictions of the French landscape and, most of all, his religious pictures. He also became a mentor and role model for a new generation of Black artists, who traveled to France in the 1910s and 1920s to seek his professional guidance and found similar artistic transcendence in Europe. This focused exhibition highlights Tanner’s impact on several younger artists: Palmer C. Hayden, William H. Johnson, William Edouard Scott and Hale Woodruff. It is anchored by an important Parisian cityscape by Tanner on extended loan from the Terra Foundation of American Art.

“In Dialogue” is a series of installations in which the Georgia Museum of Art’s curators create focused, innovative conversations around works of art from the permanent collection. The series brings these familiar works to life by placing them in dialogue with objects by influential peers, related sketches and studies or even objects from later periods.