Analysis: The Banjo Lesson

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Talking Art: A Visual Communication

Henry Ossawa Tanner, one of the most well known African-American painters before the twentieth century, painted his most illustrious pieces of artwork; The Banjo Lesson. Tanner painted the rectangular (49” x 35 1/2”) canvas using oil paint, while on a visit to Philadelphia in 1893. The painting is now on display in the Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia (Frank).
There are notably two main subjects within this painting. The first is an elderly gentleman and the second is a young boy. Other visual objects include; a banjo, a counter with a pitcher and bowl sitting on top of towels, a skillet, pottery bowl, and kettle laying on the floor in front of a fire, logs of wood, a chair with a shirt draped over it and two small pictures on the back wall. The painting has both organic as well as geometric shapes throughout.
Straight lines are used to form floorboards while directional lines are used to lead the viewer to the focal point. Earth-tone colors such as tans, browns, and grays are used to define the chair, coat laying upon the chair, cabinet, back wall, floorboards, elderly man and his clothing, the young boy as well as his clothing, wood, ceramic pot, and skillet. Blue is used to define darkness on the left side of the painting as a …show more content…

The elderly man, the young boy, the chair, the cabinet with towels, a pitcher with bowl, and the pictures hanging on the wall all show realism. Geometrical shapes include circles, (the banjo, the skillet, the top of the ceramic pot) and rectangles (the towels, and pictures). Thick brush strokes on the elderly mans pants show the gathering of the material, wide brush strokes are used to show wood grain on the floorboards and feathery brush strokes on the back wall are illuminating the glow from the light of the fire. A pattern of images is seen between the skillet and the

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