Benjamin Tucker Tanner Research Paper One of the most famous African-American artists who gained international acclaim is Henry Ossawa Tanner. Henry was an African-American was born June 21, 1859 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and died May 25, 1937. Henry father, Benjamin Tucker Tanner was a college-educated teacher and African Methodist Minister and Henry mother, Sarah, was a strong woman who was able to escape slavery by using the Underground Railroad. Henry is different from other artists because he had to overcome the racial barrier that was going on during that time, his art world was exquisite and influential and he was the first African American artist to be internationally known. Henry was brought up mainly in Philadelphia and found a interests in the arts, …show more content…
He had a son with her which he named Jesse Ossawa Tanner who was born in 1903. Henry tried going back to America where he could live the remainder of his life but unfortunately the racially barrier was to string so he went back to Paris where he live for the rest of his life. Towards the end of Henry life he mainly focused on doing religious paintings. He even entered one of his pieces at the American Art Galleries in New York. This got him the title honorary chevalier of the Order of the Legion of Honor, France’s most distinguished award. Then soon after that, four years later, Henry became the first African American to be elected in the National Academy of Design in New York; which is a great Honor. Another fascinating thing that happened to Henry was that his art piece “Sand dunes at Sunset” became the first work by any African American artist to be acquired by the White House, this happened when Clinton was in office. “Sand dunes at Sunset” is a landscape which shows a quiet gray beach with dunes that are lite by a fading sun over smooth waves. This masterpiece was considered one of his most beautiful landscape
Fully skilled in many fields Charles Peale was known as an American Leonardo. Living from 1741-1827 Peale was the eldest of 5 children who grew up in Chestertown Maryland (Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography). Because of being a scientist, artist, saddler, watchmaker, silversmith, upholsterer, soldier, politician and inventor, Charles Peale earned the title of a true enlightenment man. Inventing a new type of spectacles, porcelain false teeth, a steam bath and a stove that consumed its own smoke, Peale certainly was superiorly innovative (Strickland 72). While being trained in the trade of saddle making, Peale decided, at the age of 21, that painting would be a better route to take. In 1776 he settled in Philadelphia and during the American revolutionary war, Peale served as a militia officer from 1776-1778 and continued to paint throughout this whole time. With his three wives, Rachel Brewer, Elizabeth DePeyster and Hannah Moore, Peale had 17 children (Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography). Due to his insatiable interest and curiosity Willson Peale founded a natural history museum...
Claude Monet played an essential role in a development of Impressionism. He created many paintings by capturing powerful art from the world around him. He was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, France. Later, his family moved to Le Havre, Normandy, France because of his father’s business. Claude Monet did drawings of the nature of Normandy and time spent along the beaches and noticing the nature. As a child, his father had always wanted him to go into the family grocery business, but he was interested in becoming an artist. He was known by people for his charcoal caricatures, this way he made money by selling them by the age of 15. Moreover, Claude went to take drawing lessons with a local artist, but his career in painting had not begun yet. He met artist Eugène Boudin, who became his teacher and taught him to use oil paints. Claude Monet
Ernie Barnes was and still is one of the most popular and well-respected black artists today. Born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, in 1938, during the time the south as segregated, Ernie Barnes was not expected to become a famous artist. However, as a young boy, Barnes would, “often [accompany] his mother to the home of the prominent attorney, Frank Fuller, Jr., where she worked as a [housekeeper]” (Artist Vitae, The Company of Art, 1999). Fuller was able to spark Barnes’ interest in art when he was only seven years old. Fuller told him about the various schools of art, his favorite painters, and the museums he visited (Barnes, 1995, p. 7). Fuller further introduced Barnes to the works of such artists as, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Correggio, which later influenced Barnes’ mannerist style of painting.
The Civil War had a very large affect on all of the States. It changed men from gentlemen that went to church every Sunday and never cussed to people who rarely went to church and cussed all the time. Some of the people in the war were also very corrupt and did not do things as they should be done. The way that the enemy was looked at was even changed. All of these things were talked about in "The Civil War Diary of Cyrus F. Boyd".
He has resided and taught in New York. I think his images and prints continue to reveal his practice and memories of growing up in the South. Not only is his subject matter about African American people, but more universally, people of all kinds - black, white, wealthy, poor, religious, northern or southern. As to what I found, his work has been portrayed as Southern, black, or radical, but I think he is above all an American artist. He draws on many different influences in his art, including his father.
Jacob was an African-American artist, who eventually flourished in the art world during the Depression of 1920s, painting African-Americans life in Harlem, making social statements and thus, explaining their life during that time. Additionally, this made his art significant to spectators who praised his works. With no formal training in painting, it was easy for Jacob to ignore the rules that set him apart from other African-American painters and others, before him and in his time, such as Palmer C. Hayden, and Archibald Motely, Jr to whom he was compared. Jacob Lawrence artwork communicated historical data and his perspective of people he was familiar with in his culture. His work expressed how African- Americans struggled for health and social justice, how they were ignored by the Republican administrations, racial equality and eventually, why African-American voters would shift to the Democratic Party.
As different as both artists are in their form and how they each create their art, they both see how hard it is to be an African American artist. Through their work they tell a story of triumphs and failures and the issues in the world for African Americans and the struggles they face. Even though Benny died in 2006, his work has shown how as an artist he has overcome many hurdles in his life to become the wonderful artist he is today. Hank tells the stories of what it is to be an African American in today’s world and the new struggles they face from day to day.
beautiful works of art. Douglas reached Harlem and instantly fell in love with the culture and
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey (or better known as Frederick Douglass) was born in 1818 to a black mother and a white father. Despite this unfavorable beginning, he was – and still is, to this day – universally recognized as a symbol for freedom. He dedicated his entire life towards earning rights like freedom and the right to vote for African American people.
One the most distinguished artists of the twentieth century, Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City and spnt part of his child hood in Pennsylvania. After his parents split up in 1924, he went with his mother and siblings to New York, settling in Harlem. "He trained as a painter at the Harlem Art Workshop, inside the New York Public Library's 113 5th Street branch. Younger than the artists and writers who took part in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Lawrence was also at an angle to them: he was not interested in the kind of idealized, fake-primitive images of blacks - the Noble Negroes in Art Deco guise - that tended to be produced as an antidote to the toxic racist stereotypes with which white popular culture had flooded America since Reconstruction. Nevertheless, he gained self-confidence from the Harlem cultural milieu - in particular, from the art critic Alain Locke, a Harvard-trained esthete (and America's first black Rhodes scholar) who believed strongly in the possibility of an art created by blacks, which could speak explicitly to African-Americans and still embody the values, and self-critical powers, of modernism. Or, in Locke's own words, "There is in truly great art no essential conflict between racial or national traits and universal human values." This would not sit well with today's American cultural separatists who trumpet about the incompatibility of American experiences - "It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand" - but it was vital to Lawrence's own growth as an artist. Locke perceived the importance of the Great Migration, not just as an economic event but as a cultural one, in which countless blacks took over the control of their own lives, which had been denied them in the South: When years later he told an interviewer that "I am the black community," he was neither boasting nor kidding. He had none of the alienation from Harlem that was felt by some other black artists of the 1930s, like the expatriate William Johnson.
Born in Bolton, Lancashire, England in 1837, Thomas was taken to the United States at the age of 7. (Ency. Bio. Vol. 11). He was educated in Philadelphia public schools for his elementary years and then indentured to a wood engraving firm in 1853-1856. (Am.Nat.Bio.Vol 15). He had three brothers who were artist, but he learned to paint from his brother Edward Moran. He did do some watercolors during his apprentictionship and in 1856, he painted his first oil painting titled, Among the Ruins There He Lingered. (Vol.11). Moran still working closely with his brother became an informer student of Philadelphia marine artist James Hamilton. Hamilton may have introduced him to the work of J.M.W, turner and a belief in close study of nature in his foundation of panting. (Vol.15) Moran exhibited landscapes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the fine arts for the first time in 1856 and then later elected academician in 1861. He continued to exhibit there through 1905. (Vol.15). 1862 Thomas married Mary Nimmo who had always thought to be her husbands student. (Vol.15). The beginning of his life had just started and didn't know that he would accomplish so many feats with his artwork of nature.
Audubon was born on April 26, 1785 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. (now Haiti). JJA was the son of the intelligent Jean Audubon, a French Naval officer, marine captain and a sugar plantation owner. (Source #4 pg. 17) His mother was a French chambermaid from the village of Mazures who died about six months after his birth. It was when JJA was in middle school when he started skipping classes to wander off into the wilderness and pursue his passion of painting what he saw. With the guidance and help from his father, JJA began drawing “feathered tribes”. His father would point out the birds “elegant movements and the beauty and softness of their plumage” (Pg. 18 of source #4) In 1803, his father sent him to America to over see his families property at Mill Grove in Philadelphia. It was then when JJA immediately f...
..., where his paintings grew even more popular due to their religious themes. His study in drawing and painting became beneficial to becoming friends with a renowned mentor, Stuart Davis. “In the early 1930’s, he joined the Harlem Artists Guild and was responsible for the drawing of cartoons that were to be published in Baltimore Afro-American. He formed the spiral group that dealt with the promotion of the black artists’ works, as well as, exploring ways for contributing to the civil rights movements at that time” (edu, 2014). His lifelong commitment to African Art, helped shape the way that African American art was viewed.
Archibald Motley Jr. was born in 1891 in New Orleans. Ever since, Archibald was a child he had the desire to be an artist. His family moved to a Chicago neighborhood in the 1890’s, but the family would take frequent trips back to New Orleans in the summer. Later we find out that these two similar settings were the determining factor for Archibald’s paintings. He decided to study art at the Institute of Chicago and was recognized by being one of the few African American artists during that time.
“… Without a continuous bond uniting men, without a continuous current of shared thought, … there could be no living worthy of being called human.” Richard Wright spoke these words in his autobiography Black Boy. He, as well as many other black Americans have displayed exmplemtory talent in the arts. As a matter of fact, blacks have contributed their talents to the arts, for many years, especially in the areas of painting, literature, and music.