VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents The 12th Annual African American Art Advisory Association Public Lecture: Henry Ossawa Tanner.  Mar 7, 2009 7:00 PM, at the Audrey Jones Beck Building.

Presented by Dr. Dewey F. Mosby, Director Emeritus of the Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton, New York

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) was one of the best-known painters in the United States and France at the turn of the 20th century. He was also the leading African American artist of the period. The canvases of his early works are filled with seascapes, animals, and traditional genre scenes, while images of African American life and impressionist-inspired landscapes captured his attention during his first years in France, where he moved at age 31. Tanner´s mature career focused on religious paintings and scenes of the Arab world that blend the traditions of academic art with modernist French techniques.

In his talk Dr. Dewey Mosby surveys Tanner´s career, focusing on the relationship of Tanner´s race to his approach to painting and to his environs. A reception to meet Dr. Mosby and a book-signing to celebrate the release of Collecting African American Art: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, written by John Hope Franklin and Alvia J. Wardlaw, follows the lecture.

This lecture is made possible by generous support from 5-A, the African American Art Advisory Association at the MFAH.

Pictured:  Henry Ossawa Tanner, detail Flight into Egypt,  1921, Oil on board.