Edmonia Lewis and Henry Ossawa Tanner

When considering art there are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important elements in art are the most obvious one’s to see. Mary Edmonia Lewis and Henry Ossawa Tanner are two artists who have created art that speak to people in depth of their creativity and inspiration from others. Although these two artists study two different genres of art, both of these artists have great talent that has been recognized throughout the world. Mary Edmonia Lewis who was born in 1843 and Henry Ossawa Tanner who was born in 1859 have come a very long way, and overcame countless obstacles to become successful. Edmonia Lewis was the first African American woman in the United States to gain widespread recognition as an artist, and the first African American in the United States to gain an international reputation as a sculptor” (Mary 40). Edmonia Lewis spent her early childhood with her mother’s family, the Chippewa Indians. She was known as Wildfire, and her brother was known as Sunrise. Edmonia and her brother were orphaned when Edmonia was about ten years old, two aunts took them in as children. Both Edmonia and Sunrise lived in northern New York state (Buick 10).

Sunrise, with wealth from the California Gold Rush, financed prep school education for Edmonia Lewis, and then an education at Oberlin College, beginning in 1859. It wasn’t until Edmonia entered Oberlin College that she started going by her birth name. Edmonia was considered a very popular student in college. On January 27, 1862 Edmonia’s college life took a turn for the worse. While at Oberlin College, Edmonia was accused of poisoning two white female students, who also boarded at John Keep’s home, a well- known Oberlin trustee. While awaiting trial, she was nearly beaten to death.

Edmonia was defended in court by John Mercer Langston, an Oberlin graduate. She was acquitted and carried from the courtroom on the shoulders of supportive friends, and continued her studies at Oberlin for a while. After a couple months went by Edmonia considered moving back with her mother but instead Edmonia decided to go to Boston and study with Edmond Brackett, a local sculptor. Edmonia had some success, especially among American tourists. Edmonia was known for her depictions of African, African American, or Native American people.

Some of Edmonia’s best-known sculptures are, Forever Free created in 1867, which is a sculptor of a black woman and black man celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation. Another one of her best sculptures goes by the name of, “Hagar in the Wilderness”. Which was created a year after “Forever Free”. The Hagar in the Wilderness was a sculpture of an Egyptian handmaiden of Sarah and Abraham, mother of Ishmael. One of her most talked about works is “The Death of Cleopatra”, Created in (1875). This sculpture is known to be a representation of the Egyptian queen.

Edmonia created the more realistic “The Death of Cleopatra” for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial it was also displayed at the 1878 Chicago Exposition. Unfortunately this piece of art was lost for a century. Soon the statue was moved and then rediscovered, and it was restored in 1987. As Edmonia started to gain proceeds from her work, she opened a studio of her own. Among all the pieces that Edmonia created “there were a medallion of John Brown and a bust of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, Civil-War leader of Massachusetts Fifity-Fourth, an all-black regiment” (Mary 42).

With the funds she received from those two pieces Edmonia was able to study in Europe. As Edmonia sprouted into her sculpting career, she also influenced other artists to follow in her footsteps. While Edmonia was a very talented and creative artist her length of popularity proved to be somewhat brief. Although Edmonia life ended too soon, her work still lives on to this day. Today, Edmonia’s work is represented by Henry Wadsworth a well-known poet. Two of Edmonia’s best sculptures, “A bust of Abraham Lincoln” and “Forever Free” are on display in the Municipal Library of San Jose, California.

Edmonia finished “Forever Free” in 1868 and sent it to a wealthy abolitionist named, Samuel Sewall. Lydia Maria scolded Edmonia for sculpting the piece into marble without a commission, and eventually Lydia withdrew her support. Edmonia was honored the following year when the sculpture was presented to Rev. Leonard Grimes, a leading black abolitionist. Edmonia also sculpted “Hagar in the Wilderness” in 1868, a little while after becoming Catholic. Edmonia quotes “Some praise me because I am a colored girl, and I don’t want that kind of praise. I had rather you would point out my defects, for that will teach me something” (Buick 4).

With this quote, Edmonia Lewis is remembered forever for her creativity and talent as a highly skilled sculptor. Henry Ossawa Tanner was the son of a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Henry was also raised in an affluent, well-educated African-American family. Although Henry’s parents were unwilling at first, they eventually responded positively to Henry’s determined desire to follow an artistic career and they began to encourage his determinations. In 1879, Henry enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he joined Thomas Eakins’s coterie.

Henry moved to Atlanta in 1889 in an unsuccessful attempt to support himself as an artist and instructor. A woman by the name of Mrs. Joseph C. Hartzell arranged Tanner’s first solo exhibition, being that he was already a struggling artist. She also arranged for the proceeds to go to Henry, so that he could move to Paris in 1891. A disturbing Illness brought Henry back to the United States in 1893, at this time in Henry’s career he turned his attention to genre subjects of his own race. Henry was different from a lot of artists in many ways. In 1893 most American artists painted African-American subjects either as sentimental figures of rural poverty” (Burgard 12). Henry, who wanted to represent black subjects with self-respect, wrote: “Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, the ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior. ” (Burgard 15). This gave Henry the motivation to create the piece “The Banjo Lesson” The banjo had become a symbol of ridicule, and cartoons of bland, smiling African-Americans strumming the instrument were a cliche.

In “The Banjo Lesson”, Tanner challenges the stereotype head on. “The Banjo Lesson” is a work of art, portraying a man teaching his young son to play the instrument. Tanner recreated the father in The Banjo Lesson as a mentor, and wise man. The Banjo Lesson is about sharing knowledge and passing on wisdom to others. In the fall of 1888, Henry returned to Atlanta and taught drawing for two years at Clark College. After discussing his ambitions to travel abroad with Bishop and Mrs. Hartzell, they arranged an exhibition of Tanner’s works in Cincinnati in the fall of l890.

When no paintings were sold, the Hartzells bought the entire collection. This is what made Henry the talented artist that he was. Not only was Henry’s art fascinating to look at but, his art work also had sentimental meaning and value. Henry’s art had purpose and meaning to share with others. Within Henry’s work, he hoped to reach out to others by sharing his wisdom. With all Henry’s proceeds from various art works, Henry was able to return to Paris in 1895, he established a reputation as a salon artist and religious painter but he never painted genre subjects of African-Americans again.

Henry was a very talented and prestigious artist, “In 1908 his first one-man exhibition of religious paintings in the United States was held at the American Art Galleries in New York” (Richardson 15). Two years later, Tanner was elected a member of the National Academy of Design. In Henry’s later years, he was a symbol of hope and inspiration for African-American leaders and young black artists, many of those African American leaders visited him in Paris. On May 25, 1937, Henry died at his home in Paris.

After Henry’s death in Paris, interest in Henry’s works lessened significantly. The most renowned of all black artists was rediscovered, largely as a result of a major exhibit in New York, in 1967. Two years later the Smithsonian Institution presented a large reflective that spread far throughout the United States. Although Henry’s art “Banjo Lesson” is considered a classic work of art, Allthough Henry Ossawa Tanner passed away too soon, he lived a long life of adventure and experience, and his art work will live on forever.