Tanner, Henry Ossawa, 1859–1937, American painter, b. Pittsburgh; son of a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He studied with Eakins in Philadelphia and in Paris. Tanner made many trips to Palestine to obtain background for his religious paintings. His work is naturalistic, and the religious subjects especially are strongly rendered. Among his paintings are Christ and Nicodemus (Pa. Acad. of the Fine Arts); Two Disciples at the Tomb (Art Inst., Chicago); The Banjo Lesson (Hampton Inst., Hampton, Va.).

Tanner, Henry Ossawa

(born June 21, 1859, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.—died May 25, 1937, Paris, France) U.S. painter. He studied under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he was the only black student. He moved to Paris in 1891, and by 1894 his work was being exhibited at the annual Salons, where he was awarded honourable mention in 1896 for Daniel in the Lions' Den and won a medal in 1897 for his Raising of Lazarus. He gained international acclaim and many awards for his landscapes and his treatments of biblical themes. He was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1923, and in 1927 he became the first African American granted full membership in the National Academy of Design.

Tanner, Henry Ossawa (1859–1937) painter; born in Pittsburgh, Pa. A major 19th-century black painter of religious and genre scenes, he studied with Thomas Eakins (1880–82). Tormented by racial persecution, he settled in Paris, France (1891) and only briefly returned to America (1902–04). His early atmospheric genre works, such as The Banjo Lesson (c. 1893), have been recently rediscovered and praised by the art world.