Thomas Eakins, Portrait of Henry O. Tanner, 1900. Oil on canvas, 24⅛" × 20¼". The Hyde Collection

Pittsburgh native, Henry Tanner enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1879 where he studied under Thomas Eakins, who would become a lifelong friend and mentor.

Tanner, supremely talented and non-confrontational, struggled with the racism prevalent in post-war Philadelphia and after years of trying to gain artistic acceptance, he left for France in 1891. Welcomed in artistic circles, the French paid little attention to race and Tanner quickly found a home in Paris.

Considered a ‘realist’ painter, his work regularly won prizes in the Paris Salons and were purchased or donated to countless museums, including: Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Chicago Art Institute, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Musee d’Orsay, Paris, High Museum and Smithsonian.

Purchased by the White House Endowment Fund during the Clinton administration, Tanner’s landscape, Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City (c. 1885) is the first painting by an African-American artist entered in the permanent collection of the White House. More importantly, Henry Tanner was the first African-American elected as a full member of the National Academy of Design.

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