The Art Institute acquired The Two Disciples at the Tomb in 1906 after the canvas was declared “the most impressive and distinguished work of the season” at the museum’s annual exhibition of American painting and sculpture. At that time, Henry Ossawa Tanner was at the height of his reputation, enjoying international fame and winning prizes on both sides of the Atlantic. The son of an African American bishop, Tanner was raised in Philadelphia, where he studied with Thomas Eakins before working as an artist and photographer in Atlanta. Repelled by the racial prejudice he encountered in the United States, he chose to spend nearly all of his adult life in France.
Tanner’s early subjects included many scenes of African American life, but later he specialized in religious paintings. The Two Disciples at the Tomb is one of the most concentrated and austere of these works. The somber spirituality of the moment when two of Jesus’s followers realize that he has risen from the dead is conveyed by Tanner’s use of dark tones and compressed space and his avoidance of superfluous detail. Although the artist painted in a relatively conservative representational manner throughout his life, the sinuous lines and simplified, harsh modeling here suggest his awareness of Art Nouveau and Expressionist currents in contemporary European painting. Likewise, his emphasis on psychological rather than physical experience has many parallels in advanced art of the same period, including Pablo Picasso’s early work, such as The Old Guitarist, painted two years earlier.
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“Award For Negro Artist,” The Washington Post, Oct 18, 1906, 1.
“Sales,” American Art News 5, no. 1 (Oct 20, 1906): 1.
“Chicago Art News,” American Art News 5, no. 2 (Oct 27, 1906): 2.
“Tanner’s Bible Pictures on View,” The Advocate (Charleston, West Virginia), Dec 31, 1908, 6.
“Exhibition of American Paintings in Texas,” Art and Progress 1, no. 3 (Jan 1910): 75.
“The Stickney Benefactions,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 3, no. 3 (Jan 1910): 34.
“Henry O. Tanner’s Biblical Pictures,” Fine Arts Journal 24, no. 3 (Mar 1911): 162 (ill.).
“Art Works Reproduced: Tanner Collection Exhibited at M Street High School,” The Washington Herald, Mar 30, 1911.
“Notes,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 7, no. 4 (Apr 1914): 64.
“Again-A Free Ad for the Art Institute,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct 10, 1915, B9.
Karen Fisk, “The Annual American Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago,” The American Magazine of Art 17, no. 12 (Dec 1926): 624–25.
Frederic J. Haskin, “Answers to Questions,” The Evening Star (Washington, DC), May 25, 1938, A-10.
Albert G. Barnett, “Paintings Now Hang Among World Famous Collection At A Century of Progress,” The Chicago Defender, Sep 2, 1963: 16 (ill.).
Marcia M. Mathews, “Henry Ossawa Tanner, American Artist,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 65 (1966): 464 (ill.), 468.
Charles H. Wesley, “Henry O. Tanner The Artist,” Negro History Bulletin 31, no. 1 (Jan 1968): 10.
Marcia M. Mathews, Henry Ossawa Tanner: American Artist, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969, 130–31, 238.
Marcia M. Mathews, “The Art of Henry O. Tanner,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 69/70 (1969/1970): 454 (ill.).
Henry J. Seldis, “‘Black American Art’: Crossing the Color Line,” Los Angeles Times, Oct 10, 1976, 64.
Albert Boime, “Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” The Art Bulletin 75, no. 3 (1993): 440, fig. 27 (ill.).
Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of African-American Artists From 1792 to the Present, New York: Pantheon Books, 1993, 98, 99 (ill.).
Marcia M. Mathews, Henry Ossawa Tanner: American Artist, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, 131, 132, 238 (ill.).
Anne Rorimer, “The Display of Twentieth-Century Art. Chicago, Art Institute,” The Burlington Magazine, Sep 1994, 645.
Susan F. Rossen, “Introduction,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, 2 (1999), 141.
Andrea D. Barnwell, Kirsten P. Buick, Margaret Denny, Martin Fox, Jennifer Jankauskas, Dennis A. Narowcki, Mark Pascale, Kymberly N. Pinder, and Andrew J. Walker, “A Portfolio of Works by African American Artists Continuing the Dialogue: A Work in Progress,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, no. 2 (1999): 186, 190.
Lisa Meyerowitz, “The Negro in Art Week: Defining the “New Negro” Through Art Exhibition,” African American Review 31, no. 1 (1997): 88, n. 13.
“Americas Art Museums and the Broad Canvas of American Racial Thought,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 16 (1997): 49.
Alan G. Artner, “More than a Century of Collecting: African-American Artists Richly Covered at Institute,” Chicago Tribune, Feb 27, 2003, ill.
Susanna W. Gold, “Review Essay: Modern Spirit,” Modernism/modernity 19, no. 3 (2012): 603.
Kimberly Laurren Glenn, “Chicago and the Visual Art of the ‘New Negro Movement,’ 1925–1940” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2013), 94.
Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017), 90.
Jo-Ann Morgan, “Review of “Beholding Christ and Christianity in African American Art” by James Romaine and Phoebe Wolfskill,” Caa.reviews, May 2, 2018, http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/3356.
Art Institute of Chicago, Nineteenth Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings and Sculpture by American Artists, Oct 16–Nov 29, 1906, cat. 295.
New York, American Art Galleries, Religious Paintings by the Distinguished American Artist Mr. Henry O. Tanner, Dec 15–25, 1908, cat. 10.
Texas, Public Library of Fort Worth, Exhibition of American Paintings, 1910, no cat.
Art Institute of Chicago, Half a Century of American Art, Nov 16, 1939–Jan 7, 1940, cat. 160, pl. IX (ill.).
Chicago, South Side Community Art Center, We Too Look at America, May 1941, cat. 25.
Chicago, McCormick Place, Century of Negro Progress Exposition, Aug 16–Sep 2, 1963, no cat. no.
Washington, DC, Howard University, Ten Afro-American Artists of the Nineteenth Century, Feb 3–Mar 30, 1967, no cat. no., 23, 32 (ill.).
New York, Grand Central Art Galleries, Exhibition of Paintings: Henry Ossawa Tanner, Nov 16–Dec 7, 1967, no cat. no. (ill.).
Atlanta, Spelman College, Henry O. Tanner, An Afro-American Romantic Realist, Mar 30–Apr 30, 1969, cat. 7 (ill.)
Berkeley, University of California Art Museum, The Hand and the Spirit: Religious Art in America 1770–1900, Jun 27–Aug 6, 1972, cat. 104; Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Sep–Oct, 1972; Dallas Museum of Art, Dec 10, 1972–Jan 14, 1973; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Feb–Apr 1973.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Selections of Nineteenth Century Afro-American Art, Jun 19–Aug 1, 1976, no cat. no.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Two Centuries of Black American Art, Sep 30–Nov 21, 1976, cat. 54, 55 (ill.); Atlanta, High Museum of Art, Jan 8–Feb 20, 1977; Dallas Museum of Art, Mar 30–May 15, 1977; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Jun 25–Aug 21, 1977.
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Turn-of-the-Century America, Jun 30–Oct 2, 1977, no cat. no., 193, fig. 22 (ill.); St. Louis Art Museum, Dec 1, 1977–Jan 21, 1978; Seattle Art Museum, Feb 2–Mar 12, 1978; California, Oakland Museum of Art, Apr 4–May 28,1978.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Jan 20–Apr 14, 1991, cat. 59,193 (ill.); Detroit Institute of Arts, May 12–Aug 4, 1991; Atlanta, High Museum of Art, Sep 17–Nov 24, 1991; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, Dec 14, 1991–Mar 1, 1992.
Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Across Continents and Cultures: The Art and Life of Henry Ossawa Tanner, Jun 25–Aug 20, 1995, no cat. no., 54 (ill.); Dallas Museum of Art, Sep 12–Dec 31, 1995; Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art, Jan 12–May 5, 1996.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Henry O. Tanner: Modern Spirit, Jan 27–Apr 15, 2012, no cat. no., 60, 61, 62, 129, 130, pl. 54 (ill.); Cincinnati Art Museum, May 26–Sep 9, 2012; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Oct 21, 2012–Jan 13, 2013.
The artist; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1906.
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