Henry Ossawa Tanner

(1859-1937)

Return from the Cross 39 7/8 x 29 7/8in (101.3 x 75.9cm)

Footnotes

Provenance
The artist, Paris, France.
Private collection, cousin-in-law of the above, by descent.
By descent to the present owner, son of the above, January 1999.

Exhibited
(probably) Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Fourteenth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings, March 24-May 5, 1935, p. 95, no. 277.

Literature
(probably) D.F. Mosby, D. Sewell, R. Alexander-Minter, Henry Ossawa Tanner, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1991, p. 53.

The present work retains what is probably its original frame designed by the artist.

Henry Ossawa Tanner was one of America's most groundbreaking artists at the turn of the twentieth century having achieved notable acclaim and international recognition. Tanner was the first African American artist to have a major solo exhibition in the United States, the first to be inducted into the National Academy of Design, and decades after his passing, in 1996, the first to have his work acquired for the collection of The White House in Washington, D.C. Tanner's most accomplished works remain his depictions of religious subjects, particularly those that focus on the life of Christ. His work was impacted forever by his religious experiences as a child and sought to translate the importance of these, noting, "My effort has been not only to put the Biblical incident in the original setting, but at the same time to give the human touch which makes the whole world kin and which ever remains the same...There is but one thing more important than these qualities, and that is to try to convey to the public the reverence and elevation these subjects impart to you, which is the primary cause of their choice." (as quoted in "Tanner Exhibits Paintings," The New York Times, January, 29, 1924, vol. LXXIII, no. 24,111, p. 9) The scarce works executed in the latter years of Tanner's life on the subject of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ are considered to be among the artist's best work. Return from the Cross is from this period and one of Tanner's most superb biblical paintings that boldly demonstrates his mastery of a unique painting technique that distinctly employed thick, textured applications of richly colored paint.

Tanner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on June 21, 1859 to Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1835-1923) and Sarah Miller Tanner. His father was a man with deep religious convictions and a respected bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. From a young age, Tanner was exposed to the religious teachings of the Gospel that would influence his work throughout his career. During the summer of 1872, around Tanner's thirteenth birthday, the family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Tanner decided that he wanted to be an artist after witnessing a landscape painter work while walking with his father through his neighborhood of Fairmount Park. Several years of self-training followed until 1879, when he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, becoming their only African American student. Tanner had the great fortune to study under Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) who encouraged new methods of painting and sought to excite and inspire his students. Tanner would prove to be one of Eakins' favorite students and he benefited from his thorough teachings of anatomy and understanding of the weight and structure of the human figure that would have an everlasting impression on him, surely recalling his rendering of the body of Christ in The Crucifixion (1880, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

Tanner continued his education in Paris, France in 1891, when he enrolled at the Académie Julian. By the mid-1890s, Tanner almost exclusively devoted himself to painting religious subjects and his work gained recognition from critics in both Europe and America. To further inform his work, he traveled extensively from 1897-98 throughout the Holy Land around Jerusalem, Palestine, and the Dead Sea region. It was in 1899, during his second trip to Jerusalem, when Tanner began to paint one of his most prized biblical scenes, Nicodemus Visiting Jesus (1899, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). He received his first major merits in the United States and in 1900, won the esteemed Lippincott Prize at the Sixty-Ninth Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. It was also during this period, in 1899, when Tanner married the famous American singer, Jessie Macauley Olssen, and the couple decided to settle in France. Tanner's success and concentration on biblical subjects grew throughout this period in his career and in 1908, Tanner had his first solo exhibition of biblical paintings in the United States at the American Art Galleries in New York.

By the late-1920s and 1930s, when Tanner painted Return from the Cross, he experienced a tumultuous period in his personal and professional life. Tanner's health was declining, and he struggled perpetually with his depression over the death of his wife on September 25, 1925. He was also increasingly concerned for his only son's, Jesse Ossawa Tanner's, health after suffering a mental breakdown. On top of these personal conflicts, the decline in commercial success for his work and a worsening post-war economy impacted Tanner financially. Tanner's consistent grief and melancholy from this period undoubtedly influenced his return to scenes of the crucifixion whose characters, when painted by his hand, embody Tanner's despondency. Channeling his challenging circumstances, the quality of these relatively scarce late works by Tanner are considered among his best, including Return from the Cross.

Return from the Cross depicts a moment after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at Golgotha outside of Jerusalem. The apostle John, with his hand on Mary, the mother of Jesus, consuls her for a moment as she gazes rightward with a solemn expression. The interaction between John and Mary in this moment abides by the Gospel of John 19:25-27, "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdelene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home." It is acknowledged and accepted that Jesus' foster-father Joseph had already passed away at the time of Jesus' death, leaving Mary a widow and Jesus as the one primarily in charge of his aging mother. Before Jesus was about to die on the cross, he appointed one of his disciples to care for Mary and scripture scholars agree that the disciple charged with this task was St. John the Evangelist. Following the crucifixion, the book of Acts 1:12-14 states, "Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day's journey away; and when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren." Thus, Tanner depicts the moments when the two made their journey back to Jerusalem, where it is interpreted that Mary lived with the apostles for the remainder of her life following the crucifixion of Jesus.

The composition for Return from the Cross is similar to Tanner's earlier work titled Return of the Holy Women (1904, Cedar Rapids Art Gallery, Cedar Rapids, Iowa) in which Tanner depicts the aged and sorrowful figure of Mary walking ahead of John to her left and Mary Magdalen to her right. Visible behind the figure of John is the outline of a woman's headdress that suggests the mourners are following behind them. The scene evokes the Gospel of John 19:25-27, but Tanner's focus is less so on the emotion and relationship between Mary and John and more on capturing the sorrow of the procession of those in attendance at the cross in the landscape surrounding them. Tanner explained "It has often seemed to me that, when bowed by some sorrow, nature seemed more radiant than ever before...All is tranquility and loveliness, only within the souls of that sorrowing mother and those loving disciples is there turmoil and sorrow." ("The Story of an Artist's Life, Parts I and II," The World's Work, June/July, 1909, nos. 2, 3, p. 11774) By contrast, in the present work, Tanner crops the scene so the viewer is presented with a closer, detailed portrait of the centrally placed figures of Mary and John and reduces the receding space of the landscape.

Return from the Cross presents similarities in composition and subject matter to Tanner's finished, smaller oil on canvas also titled Return from the Cross (circa 1930, Private Collection) and his renowned Return from the Crucifixion (1936, Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), Tanner's last signed and dated work. Both works offer an expanded view of the scene and the latter depicts the central figures of Mary and John in a similar fashion to the those in the present work leading the mourning party. Tanner's figure of Mary in Return from the Cross likely originates from an earlier drawing that he executed in pencil and conté crayon on paper titled Study for Mary (1933, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.) Tanner executed the drawing as a study for several of his works on the subject of the crucifixion including the present work and Tanner paints with the same precision the flowing lines of Mary's headdress, arms, facial features, and dress. Mary's face is arguably the most expressive in Tanner's body of work, exhibiting a palpable sadness reflective of the personal and economic tragedies the maturing artist was grappling with during the last two decades of his life. Though comparable in subject and technique to his other works of this period depicting the crucifixion, Tanner's Return from the Cross stands apart as a more detailed and intimate portrait of not only the events of the crucifixion, but of Mary and John's emotion and their relationship to one another following the crucifixion.

When Tanner completed Return from the Cross, he appeared confident in his artistic abilities during the final working years of his life and seemed pleased with his technique according to his surviving letters from the 1930s. In one of these letters dated December 27, 1936, he writes to his niece, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander (1898-1989) "I am getting older but I believe and friends believe my work is still up to its average – and I hope beyond." (as quoted in D.F. Mosby, D. Sewell, R. Alexander-Minter, Henry Ossawa Tanner, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1991, p. 287) Tanner's execution of Return from the Cross beautifully exhibits his newfound confidence in his painting abilities during the later years of his career and in his trusted techniques used to construct his biblical scenes. Characteristic of Tanner's multi-figural compositions, the figures are placed starting at the right and move toward the left with the mourners behind them. Furthermore, the space and light of the scene are indicated, but are secondary to the significance of the rich colors and thickly textured surface of the work. During the final decades of his career, Tanner experimented with painting materials and techniques to achieve a thick, smooth, and glossy surface that is visible in the present work. The finished effect is one equal to the religious experience felt viewing a biblical scene depicted in stained glass that one might find in a cathedral.

Return from the Cross is a triumph in execution and a superb example of Tanner's mature style, mastered in the final years of his life. Tanner died in his sleep several years later at his apartment on the Rue de Fleurus in Paris on May 25, 1937, leaving behind an inspiring legacy for the next generation of expressive realists and, most importantly, for future African American artists. In a letter written to his son Jesse shortly after his death, his friend and colleague Leslie Giffin Cauldwell remarked "apart from his great talent as an artist, which is universally admitted, was his beautiful Faith, a Faith that shone through all his pictures and in every little act, so that a hand shake seemed like a benediction and made one feel the better for it. His serenity was something to be envied by us all, in our hurry and struggle to achieve some little success." (as quoted in M.M. Mathews, Henry Ossawa Tanner: American Artist, Chicago, Illinois, 1969, p. 249) The pure emotion that Tanner successfully imbued in his religious scenes combined with his exquisite painting style resulted in works that remain universally captivating. Return from the Cross resides in Tanner's oeuvre as one the artist's most resplendent and multidimensional works.