Henry Ossawa Tanner's "La Sainte-Marie"

The Smithsonian Institution

Henry Ossawa Tanner's "La Sainte-Marie"Author(s): Daniel BurkeSource: Smithsonian Studies in American Art, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring, 1988), pp. 64-73Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Smithsonian American Art MuseumStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3108951 .

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Henry Ossawa Tanner's La Sainte-Marie

Daniel Burke, FSC

Henry Ossawa Tanner, La Sainte-Marie, (detail), ca. 1898. Oil on canvas, 342 x 43 4 in. La Salle University Art Museum, Philadelphia

On 12 July 1900, Robert C. Ogden, a manager of John Wanamaker's de- partment store in New York, wrote to an American artist in Paris:

The photograph ofyour last Salon picture is now before me, and it has interested me intensely. The interest increases under the light of your letter of the 1st inst., which gives me some glimpse of the inspiration and of the plans that are moving your mind. The artist who received this letter was Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859- 1937), destined to become Ameri- ca's most important black artist.

Tanner was born in Pittsburgh in 1859 to Sarah Miller Tanner and the Reverend Benjamin Tucker Tanner, later a bishop of the Afri- can Methodist Church. In 1866, the family moved to Philadelphia, where Henry became interested in painting, which led him, in 1880, to study with Thomas Eakins (1844- 1916) at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. A decade later, in 1891, Tanner began studies in Paris; by 1894, with his work ac- cepted for the annual Salon, Tanner had achieved recognition as a major talent.

Ogden, one of the artist's Ameri- can patrons, and Tanner exchanged a number of letters. Unfortunately, Tanner's letter of 1 July has not been located, but Ogden's refer- ence to "your last Salon picture" certainly suggests a religious painting, given that Tanner painted pri- marily religious works from 1896

on.2 Both Tanner's background and the current popularity of biblical subjects influenced his special ef- fort with the impressive Daniel in the Lions' Den (1896, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), which won him an honorable mention in the Salon of 1896. With that painting, Tanner may be said to have found a congenial specialization that would, for the rest of his career, utilize his deep religious feel- ing and biblical understanding as well as his artistic skills.

Just what Tanner's Salon picture was in the summer of 1900 is some- thing of a question. The received opinion has been that Ogden was praising a painting called Christ Be- fore the Doctors (1900, present whereabouts unknown).3 More likely, however, it was a painting of the Madonna and Child, which Tanner called La Sainte-Marie (fig. 1).4 This painting, which had been in private collections and has not been on public view for the last sixty years or more, was acquired recently by La Salle University Art Museum in Philadelphia. The large tabernacle frame in which the painting was first exhibited at the spring Salon of 1900 still bears a label with its entry number (1252), and another label indicating Tanner's previous Salon medal.5

Tanner selected an unusual composition for La Sainte-Marie. Un- like conventional compositions of the Virgin enthroned with her Son, or the two interacting in a tender domestic scene, here Mary is

65 Smithsonian Studies in American Art



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1 Henry Ossawa Tanner, La Sainte-Marie, ca. 1898 ''

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seated on the floor of a bare room and the child lies beside her, al- most completely covered, with a horizontal halo floating above him. Mary's gaze is fixed beyond her Son, as if contemplating his uncer- tain future-and her own. The painting was described by an American critic visiting Tanner's studio in late 1899 or early 1900 as "full of deep significance and spiri- tuality."6 Thus, it would be helpful to have what Ogden referred to in his letter of 12 July as Tanner's explanation of the "inspiration and..,. the plans" behind La Sainte- Marie, although that passage may refer more to paintings Tanner was planning for the future than to La Sainte-Marie.

There is, of course, a clear scrip- tural basis for the contemplative mood of the Virgin depicted here-Simeon's prophecy (Luke 2:34-35) that Mary's soul would be pierced by a sword. Commentators through the centuries frequently in- terpreted the sword as represent- ing Mary's sorrow over her Son's crucifixion.7 Popular piety developed a devotion to Mary's Seven

Dolors (the first of which was Simeon's prophecy itself), depict- ing the Mater Dolorosa at times with her own crown of thorns.8

It seems that Tanner's concep- tion of La Sainte-Marie is deeper than even this sad theme, and that it touches the more profound meanings of the Gospels. For instance, Mary's timeless, contemplative mood is emphasized pictori- ally, as it might be in the most sol- emn of Byzantine icons. Tanner has grasped and conveyed fully the evangelist's notion that Mary "kept in mind these things, pondering them in her heart," and "kept all these things carefully in her heart" (Luke 1:19, 1:51). As one modern commentator puts it, "From the mo- ment Mary is introduced in the In- fancy Gospel, she is portrayed as seeking to fathom the mysteries in which she now lives and moves."'

Similarly, the enigmatic imagery of the scene and its general atmo- sphere of mystery suggest that Tanner portrays not simply Mary's immediate reaction to Simeon's prophecy, but also a more funda- mental aspect of the Christmas

66 spring 1988



2 Andrea Mantegna (Italian), Presentation in the Temple, before 1460? Oil on canvas, 26 x 34 in. Staatliche Kunsthalle, Berlin

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story. Modern biblical scholarship sheds some light here, with its re- newed emphasis on Christ's infancy as the first chapter of the redemption story, not simply a charming bucolic opening for the biography of Jesus. This approach emphasizes the coming of Christ as a sign of contradiction, recognized by some (shepherds and Magi) and ignored or rejected by others (Herod). Thus, Simeon's prophecy comes as an early climax to this theme. Some scholars, in fact, see a deliberate echo between accounts of the events that occurred during Christ's infancy and the Passion:

There is the intriguing possibility that we have in the account of Christ's entombment in Mark an echo of his birth story. There ispres- ent a man named Joseph (from Arimathea'), a corpse wrapped in linen and laid (katetheken) in a tomb, and two women named Mary (one the Magdalene; the other, mother of another Joseph). Similarly in Luke 2:4, 5, 7, there is still another Joseph ('of the city of Nazareth'), a newborn wrapped

in swaddling-clothes and laid (aneklinen) in a manger, and a Mary (Miriam) betrothed to this Joseph .... There is moreover a dis- tinct possibility that..,. the offer of myrrh at the crucifixion (Mark 15:23) may echo the threefold gift of the Magi in the birth story (Matt. 2:11). o

In any event, it is clear that stories relating to Christ's infancy are tied in important ways to the mission of Christ, which came to its final climax in his Passion.

It is not surprising that the current exegetical focus on Christ's infancy appeared earlier in art- whether generally in the figure of the saddened Virgin, or in more specific details of compositions of the Madonna and Child. Gertrud Schiller lists several examples after the fourteenth century and suggests their effect on St. Bridget of Sweden, who in turn influenced later artists. After her vision of the Nativity, Bridget describes another vision in which Mary revealed to her that when she looked at the little hands and feet




3 Paul Delaroche (French), La Jeune Martyre, ca. 1853. Oil on canvas, 66?2 x 573/ in. Musde du Louvre, Paris

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of the Infant Jesus which were one day to be pierced, she was over- whelmed by grief and took comfort only from knowing that Jesus Him- self wished it so and permitted it to happen so. In this vision Bridget was clearly inspired by earlier im- ages of the Nativity, for Mary's ex- pression is often sorrowful or else she gazes into the distance as though aware of the suffering that was to come."

Perhaps Schiller's most interest- ing example is that of Andrea Mantegna's (1431-1506) Presenta- tion in the Temple, in which the infant's swaddling bands have been crossed by black lines, pre- sumably to resemble the stones at the tomb (fig. 2).12 Other paintings of the Virgin and Child, of a generally innocent and joyful character,

often have small but ominous details; in Mantegna's work, for instance, the child holds a nail. George Ferguson remarks: "The Christ Child always stands for the Incarnation but He may carry the symbols of His Passion to empha- size the relationship between His Incarnation and His sacrifice on behalf of mankind."13 In a more popular and obvious vein, there are later examples of the infant asleep on a small cross.14

Schiller addresses another ele- ment in Tanner's painting-Mary's seated position on the floor. This position is traditional in some scenes of the Annunciation and in the Virgin of Humility genre, with the ground (humus) suggesting not only the humility of Mary but also the future humiliation of her Son.s15

68 Spring 1988



4 P. A J. Dagnan-Bouveret (French), Vierge au Rabot, 1885. Oil on canvas. Present whereabouts unknown

Tanner's use of the floating, horizontal halo and the complete covering of the infant are less conventional. The floating halo appeared regularly in religious art of the nineteenth and earlier centuries. Here, however, the halo's horizontal pitch is unusual, although it is a logical one for a holy person repre- sented in a prone or supine position. One possible source for this detail might be Paul Delaroche's (1796-1856) very popular La Jeune Martyre, a painting represent- ing a young woman floating in a river or lake following her martyr- dom by drowning (fig. 3). In this painting Delaroche uses the same horizontal halo, which hovers over the woman's upturned face.x6

The source and significance of the covering on Tanner's infant are more complicated. It is possible that Tanner simply expanded on a detail in P.A.J. Dagnan-Bouveret's (1852-1929) Vierge au Rabot (fig. 4), clearly less successful in religious terms than La Sainte-Marie.

Here, a meditative Mary, seated in the carpenter shop with its some- what threatening tools, half covers the child in her lap with her cloak. Tanner acknowledged a general influence of Dagnan-Bouveret on his work, but we do not know for cer- tain whether he had seen this par- ticular painting.17

One might consider, too, that Tanner painted La Sainte-Marie after his first visit to Palestine. It is possible that, following the path of biblical Orientalists like James Tissot, he had picked up the unusual detail of the blanket after ob- serving an Arab woman protecting her child against the cold-a realis- tic detail that might have won the approval of his early teacher, Thomas Eakins. It is also possible that the suggested time of the scene (after the Presentation and before the Flight) prompted Tanner to think of Egypt and the typological imagery of the infant Moses, lying covered in a papyrus basket floating in the Nile (Exodus




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5 John Everett Millais (British), Christ in the House of His Parents, 1850. Oil on canvas, 33?4 x 55 in. Tate Gallery, London

6 John Everett Millais (British), Study for Christ in the House of His Parents, 1849. Pen, ink, pencil, and wash on paper, 7/2 x 131/ in. Tate Gallery, London

2:2, Acts 7:20, Hebrews 11:23). Here again, Tanner's instinct would be correct, for Matthew's narrative of the Flight into Egypt is clearly intended to draw parallels between the dangers that befell both the infant Christ and the infant Moses.

What seems most likely, however, is that Tanner used the blanket as a deliberate and specific symbol to tie Christ's infancy to the Passion: the blanket has become the burial shroud of Christ. Such a notion seems plausible, especially given the Pre-Raphaelites' interest in such proleptic symbolism. A well-known example was Sir John Everett Millais's (1829-1896) Christ in the House ofHis Parents (fig. 5). Here, the Christ Child holds up his wounded palm to his worried mother. The carpentry tools and ladder allude to the instruments of the Passion, and, in the preliminary drawing, a mysterious figure in the right background folds a cloth that suggests the winding sheet used to wrap Christ's body in the tomb (fig. 6). Also typical of Pre- Raphaelite symbolism is William Holman Hunt's (1827-1910) Sh,., ow ofDeath, in which the youthful Christ, raising his arms in prayer, casts a shadow cross on the wall of the room (fig. 7).

One finds these symbols also in the writings of the Pre-Raphaelites. In Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sonnet "For the Holy Family by Michelangelo," Mary withholds

from the Christ Child the Scripture in which his sufferings are fore- told;18 in James Collinson's poem "The Child Jesus," five symbols of Christ's childhood are related to in- cidents of the Passion.19 The sec- ond verse of William Chatterton Dix's familiar carol "What Child Is This," usually omitted or abbrevi- ated today as it is sung to the tune of "Greensleeves," also refers pro- phetically to the Passion:

Why lies he in such mean estate, Where ox and ass are feeding? Good Christian, fear, for sinners

here The silent Word is pleading. Nails, spear, shall pierce him

through, The cross be borne for me, for you: Hail, hail, the Word made flesh, The Babe, the Son of Mary!

Given the earlier tradition of relating Christ's infancy to the Pas- sion, and the many pictorial de- vices used by the Pre-Raphaelites, it seems reasonable to assert that Tanner is working with prophetic symbols in La Sainte-Marie.20 Com- pared to the traditionally youthful Virgin of Tanner's The Annuncia- tion (fig. 8), his depiction of Mary in La Sainte-Marie is more mature, suggesting the effect of Simeon's prophecy. Through the halo and the complete covering of the infant Christ, Tanner refers to Christ's burial.

The symbolism in this work is cer-

70 Spring 1988



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7 William Holman Hunt (British), The Shadow of Death, 1873. Oil on canvas, 845/16 x 66V0 in. City of Manchester Art Gallery

8 Henly Ossawa Tanner, The Annunciation, 1898. Oil on cancas, 57 x 71/4 in,. Philadelphia Museum of Art, W. P. Wilstach Collection

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tainly not contrived or obtrusive, as it might have been had Tanner abandoned his basic realism and followed the Pre-Raphaelites more closely. Nor does the symbolism disturb the essential peacefulness of the scene or the basic artistic values that Tanner always sought (but did not always achieve) in his religious painting. The strength and beauty of the picture lie not in its unusual iconography, but rather in its simple but assured composition-the austere and mysterious space of the room; the bal- ance of worn, rough plaster and

the folds of heavy cloak and rug; the contrast of warm earth colors and the cool light from the small window. As in all of his most successful biblical paintings, Tanner presents in La Sainte-Marie an important figure in a situation and a setting for which he has developed his own convincing rhetoric. Also, navigating at this time among the various currents of artistic fash- ion-of realism and symbolism, of Orientalism and contemporary adaptation-Tanner achieves an ex- pression that is surprisingly and es- sentially personal.

Notes

1 Robert C. Ogden, letter to Tanner, 12 July 1900, Archives of American Art, reel D306.

2 Early in his career, Tanner devoted him- self to painting landscapes and, more successfully, genre subjects. Fine examples of Tanner's genre painting include The Thankful Poor (1890, Dr. and Mrs. William Cosby, Greenield, Massachu- setts), The Banjo Lesson (1893, Hamp- ton University Museum, Hampton, Vir- ginia), and The Young Sabot Maker

(1895, Mrs. Sadie T. M. Alexander, Philadelphia).

3 This view seems to derive from an article by Vance Thompson titled "Ameri- can Artists in Paris," Cosmopolitan 29 (May 1900): 18-20. Having visited Tanner's studio and seen Christ Before the Doctors, Thompson remarked en- thusiastically that "vou will see it in the Salon." Booker T. Washington also visited and remarked that the artist "is now engaged in a painting which is to




be exhibited at the Paris Exhibition in 1900. The subject is Christ in the Tem- ple." See Some European Observations and Experiences (a pamphlet produced by the Tuskegee Institute in 1900), p. 5; Marcia Mathews, Henry Ossawa Tanner (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 98-100; and National Collection of Fine Arts [now National Museum of American Art], The Art of Henry Tanner (Chicago: The Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 23. Thompson had remarked in his article, however, that the painting was far from finished when he saw it: "The dark win- ter days have held it back, and, then, Mr. Tanner, like someone in a parable, has just married."

4 See Catalogue illustr6 du Salon de 1900 (Paris: Librarie d'Art, 1900), cat. no. 1252, and Explication des ouvrages depeinture... des artistes vivant ex- pos6 Place de Breteuil (Paris: Paul Dupont, 1900), cat. no. 1252.

5 Rodman Wanamaker, Tanner's patron, who had recently returned to Philadel- phia after some ten years in Paris, was apparently as impressed with the painting as Robert Ogden had been. Wanamaker acquired it in time to loan it to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts's 70th Annual Exhibition in 1901, to the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts exhibition in 1902 (the label for the show is on the original stretcher), and to the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exhibition in Portland, Ore- gon, in 1905. Several other paintings of this period, which Tanner called simply Mary, make it difficult to establish clearly the later exhibition history of La Sainte-Marie Among other works titled similarly was one commissioned by Edward Bok (which appeared in the January 1903 issue of his Ladies Home Companion, not in the December 1902 issue, as originally promised); the Mary (ca. 1903) exhibited by the Ringling Mu- seum of Art in 1974; and one presented in the Salon of 1914. In the 1920s, La Sainte-Marie was acquired by William Cushing Loring (1879-1959), an artist and drawing instructor at the Rhode Is- land School of Design, and subse- quently passed on to his son, Stanton Loring of Greenwich, Connecticut, who sold it in 1984 to the Washington, D.C., firm of Taggart, Jorgensen, and Putman, from which it was purchased by the La Salle Museum.

SHelen Cole, "Henry O. Tanner, Painter," Brush and Pencil 6 (June 1900): 106.

7 Commentaries on Simeon's prophecy (Luke 2:35) are reviewed conveniently in Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (New York: Doubleday, 1977), pp. 436-66.

8 James Hall says of the Mater Dolorosa and the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin: "As the Virgin of the Seven Sorrows she [Mary] is depicted with seven swords piercing her breast or framing her head, a literal rendering of the prophecy of Simeon that forms the first of the sorrows: 'This child is destined to be a sign which men reject; and you too shall be pierced to the heart' (Luke 2:34-5)" (Dictionary of Subjects & Sym- bols in Art. New York: Harper & Row, 1979, p. 325).

9 Ben Meyer, "But Mary Kept All These Things ... ," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 26 (1964): 45. For the relevant genre called "the presentiment of Mary" and other representations of the Virgin and Child in nineteenth- and twentieth- century French art, see Maurice Vloberg, La Vierge et l'Enfant dans l'art frangais (Paris: B. Arthaud, 1954), pp. 24-47.

10 A. Cabaniss, "Christmas Echoes at Paschaltide," New Testament Studies 9 (1962): 68.

11 Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Chris- tian Art, trans. Janet Seligman, vol. 1 (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1972), p. 83.

12 Ibid., p. 244.

13 George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1954), p. 158.

14 See Louis Reau, Iconographie de l'art chritien, vol. 2 (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1957), pp. 285-86. Guido Reni was one of the more exten- sive practitioners in this genre; see Stephen D. Pepper, Guido Reni (New York: New York University Press, 1984), p. 296.

15 Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, p. 48.

16 Charles Sterling and H61ene Adh6mar, Peintures &cole frangaise XIX sidcle, vol. 2 (Paris: Editions des Mus6es Nationaux, 1959), p. 18.

17 The painting is illustrated in Catalogue des oeuvres de M. Dagnan-Bouveret (Paris: Maurice Rousseau, 1930). On the general influence of Dagnan- Bouveret on Tanner, see Cole, "Henry O. Tanner," p. 105.

72 Spring 1988



18 The Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 2 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1905), p. 259.

19 See George P. Landow, William Holman Hunt and Typological Symbol- ism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), pp. 141-60.

20 "In spirit, if not in technique, there is much to connect him [Tanner] with Holman Hunt, the Pre-Raphaelite painter," wrote Benjamin Brawley in The Negro in Literature and Art (New York: Duffield, 1918), p. 109. Although one would like to be able to demon- strate more specific influences of Pre- Raphaelite imagery on La Sainte-Marie, the scarcity of letters and other records by Tanner from this period proves this unlikely. The general influence of the Pre-Raphaelites on Tanner, of course, may have come from a number of sources in France, England, and the United States. For example, he may have attended a rare exhibition of their

work at the turn of the century being held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, his alma mater. Mathews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, p. 70, mentions a trip Tanner took to Philadelphia at that time. See also Camille Mauclair, "The Influence of the Pre-Raphaelites in France," Artist 32 (1901): 169-80, andJacques Letheve, "La Connaissance des Preraphaelites ...," Gazette des Beaux Arts 53 (May-June 1951): 315- 27. Both of these scholars have deter- mined the peak of interest in Pre- Raphaelite art, especially that of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, to be in the 1890s. At least one of Tanner's contemporary critics sees the influence of Rossetti on Tanner's famous Annuncia- tion: "There is more than a reminder of Rossetti's treatment of the same subject in the girlishness of Mary as she rises, half dreamfully, half wonderingly, from her couch." Quoted in Elbert Francis Baldwin, "A Negro Artist of Unique Power," Outlook 64 (1900): 795.




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Henry Ossawa Tanner's "La Sainte-Marie"