Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Negotiation of Race and Art: Challenging “The Unknown Tanner”

This essay is a response to an article recently published by Will South titled “A Missing Question Mark: The Unknown Henry Ossawa Tanner” in the journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. Tanner was the foremost African American artist of the late 19th century. He has emerged as an exemplar of Black achievement in the arts and is now included in the canon of American art of that period. While Tanner labored to remove the equation of race as the defining factor for his artistic output, he never lost sight of his racial identity. South’s article suggests otherwise and he reconstructs Tanner as a “tragic mulatto” who, on several occasions, passed as White to advance his career and social standing. South’s conclusion seriously jeopardizes Tanner’s hard-fought reputation and greatly diminishes his celebrated cultural significance. I weigh South’s evidence against documented sources and conclude that Tanner unabashedly affirmed his “Blackness” throughout his life and art.