This book examines the life and work of artist Henry Ossawa Tanner. He was one of the most celebrated American artists of his era, yet, largely because of his race, he quickly vanished from recorded accounts of the period in which he worked. This book helps restore his legacy.

Mathews's standard biography of Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), based on extensive research in archives in this country and family records in France. An important artist in the salons of Paris, Tanner was born and studied in Philadelphia but left America for Europe, where his race would not stand in the way of his ambition. Providing a full account of the artist's life and art, Henry Ossawa Tanner gives readers insight into the art trends of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as into the struggle of African Americans of this period. "[Tanner] ranks not only as the first truly distinguished Negro American artist but as one of America's first outstanding successes in the salons of Europe. In this work [Mathews] has significantly added to our knowledge of the history of American art."—John Hope Franklin, from the Foreword "The book gives the main facts of Tanner's life and successfully places his artistic work in its historic context....It is a welcome and useful volume."—August Meier, Journal of American History

“This book constitutes a very welcome contribution to the public appreciation and scholarly study of Henry Ossawa Tanner, a painter of considerable significance in both Europe and America, and one whose religious imagery merits careful consideration. These well-researched essays by an international team of scholars offer substantial reflections on complex issues of race and religion, and situate the artist’s work and career within the context of his life and times. This is a robust framing of Tanner as a cultural phenomenon and one that readers will find quite rewarding.”—David Morgan, Professor of Religion at Duke University and author of The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling “Henry Ossawa Tanner has finally been recognized as an important artist in the last twenty years, and is now firmly part of the American canon as the first major African American painter to emerge from the academy. This book enriches our understanding of Tanner’s historic place in American art by considering his work as an early modernist religious artist—a status entwined with his race, but not defined by it. These essays, by an impressive collection of scholars, are full of substantially new material, and succeed in broadening our conception of Tanner’s life and work.”—Bruce Robertson, Professor of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Henry Ossawa Tanner was one of the true greats. Though slight and spare of body, he never spared himself in a life of devotion to high art. This volume takes the reader through Tanner's life and career, showing his many struggles and sacrifices. Wherever possible, Tanner's own words are employed to describe people and places, ranging from the famous to the obscure. What emerges is a story of gritty determination, a resolve that never quit. Even today, a century after Tanner's death, he remains one of the greatest of African American painters, a person others try to emulate.