Page 12 - Swann Galleries - African-American Fine Art - Sale 2303 - February 14, 2013

3 ● HENRY OSSAWA TANNER (1859 - 1937)
The House (Wall) in Blue .
Oil on wood panel, circa 1908-12. 331x235 mm; 13x91/4 inches.Titled in pencil, upper right verso.
Provenance: ex-collection the estate of the artist, stamped and signed by the artist’s son, Jesse O.
Tanner, Le Douet, France; The Paris American Art Company, 125 boulevard Montparnasse, Paris
and 2 rue Bonaparte, Paris, with both ink stamps on the verso, private collection; thence by descent
to the current owner.
Tanner made studies on small wood panels during his trips toTangiers and the Holy Land from the
end of the 19th century until 1912. He made his first two trips to Egypt and Palestine during 1897-
98. At this time, his painting style also took on a looser, impressionist manner as seen in Study for
Christ and Nicodemus on a Rooftop, circa 1898-1899, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.
According to Adrienne L. Childs’s essay “Tanner and ‘Oriental’ Africa,” he later visited Algeria from
February to March of 1908, but did most of his modernist “Orientalist” works from his last 1912
visit to Morocco.The dark shadows and blue palette of this empty nocturnal street scene date this
painting to this later period. Marley p. 100. [50,000/75,000]