Henry Ossawa Tanner was an African American artist. He was the first African American painter to gain international acclaim. Tanner was born in Pittsburgh, PA. His father, Benjamin Tucker Tanner was a minister, editor, and political activist. His mother Sarah Tanner had escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad. The family moved to Philadelphia when Tanner was young; his father becoming a friend, sometime supporter, sometime critic of Frederick Douglass. Although many artists refused to accept an African American apprentice, in 1879 Tanner enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine... Arts in Philadelphia, becoming the only black student. His decision to attend the school came at an exciting time in the history of artistic institutional training. Art academies had long relied on tired notions of study devoted almost entirely to plaster cast studies and anatomy lectures. This changed drastically with the addition Thomas Eakins as “Professor of Drawing and Painting” to the Pennsylvania Academy.
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