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HENRY OSSAWA TANNER (1859 - 1937)
Boy and Sheep under a Tree.
Oil on linen canvas, 1881. 444x686 mm; 17
3
/
8
x27 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left recto.
Provenance: the artist: Edward Lawrence Scull (1883); thence by descent to the current owners,
private collection, Philadelphia (1999).
This painting has a remarkable provenance having been passed down through the descendants of
Edward Lawrence Scull (1846 - 1884). Scull bought at least three paintings from Tanner in 1883
when he died, tragically, at age 38. On the back of another Tanner painting in the family, his wife
Sarah Elizabeth Marshall Scull (1845 - 1910) wrote the following note to her children: “The first
picture that dear Edward bought of the colored Artist Tanner in 1883.Tanner was then butler for
Dr. Albert H. Smith but had begun to draw and paint and used to go to Papa’s office to talk with
him about art. Now in 1900 he is living in Paris his paintings are in many of the finest private
modern collections of the world.” Dr.Albert Smith was a famous Philadelphia clinician, an Orthodox
Quaker and the Scull family doctor; he was known as a medical reformer who helped found the
Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. He introduced Tanner to Scull; four generations in
Philadelphia have since owned the painting.
Exhibited:
The Art of Henry O.Tanner
, the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC, July 23 - September 7, 1969, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH,
September 30 - November 2, 1969, the McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, TX, December 28 -
January 31, 1970, Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, February 20 - March 29, 1970,
Museum of Art, Carnegie Institution, Pittsburgh, PA, April 26- May 31, 1970, Brandeis University,
Waltham, MA, September 15 - October 26, 1970;
Henry Ossawa Tanner
, Philadelphia Museum of
Art, Philadelphia, PA, January 20 - April 14, 1991, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, May 12 -
August 4, 1991, High Museum of Atlanta, GA, September 17 - November 24, 1991,The Fine Art
Museums of San Francisco, M.H. DeYoung Museum, San Francisco, CA, December 14 - March 1,
1992;
Henry Ossawa Tanner, Modern Spirit
, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia,
PA, January 28 - April 15, 2012, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH, May 26 - September 9,
2012, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,TX, October 14, 2012 - January 13, 2013, with
several labels on the back board and frame verso. Until the end of 2014, the painting had been on
loan and exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Illustrated: Marley, Anna O.,
Henry Ossawa Tanner, Modern Spirit
, pl. 4, p. 170.
This beautiful pastoral painting is one of the finest and earliest Tanner paintings to come to auction
in the past twenty five years. In this landscape Tanner displays the polish and the skill of a great
talent. He painted
Boy and Sheep under a Tree
early in his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of
Fine Art when he seized on the speciality of painting animals.
Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in Pittsburgh to a well-educated and devoutly religious family. His
father Benjamin Tucker Tanner was an eminent bishop, author and leader in the African Methodist
Episcopal Church. He and his wife, Sarah Elizabeth Miller, an ex-slave fromWinchester,Virginia,
were both graduates of Avery College, just outside Pittsburgh. Bishop Tanner was an abolitionist, a
friend and collaborator with Frederick Douglass and a supporter of the Underground Railroad.
With the support of his parents and inspiration from the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition, Henry
Ossawa Tanner enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in December of 1879.
A year later he began life drawing classes under the tutelage of Thomas Eakins. After an interest in
maritime painting,Tanner settled on painting animal subjects, with his stated desire “to become an
American Landseer.”According to Anna O. Marley,“Tanner was so devoted to animal painting that
he bought a sheep to serve as a model for his pastoral compositions.” In addition to the animals,
Tanner’s attention to realism in this painting is evident in the careful rendering of small detail and
naturalistic light. The Christian imagery of a young shepherd with his flock is also a reflection of
the environment of his family, patrons and supporters. Marley p. 19.
[200,000/300,000]