TLDR: H.O. Tanner’s modernist invigoration of Easter morning deeply rooted in his own faith allows him to paint from a place of personal experiences rather than the more expected point of view.
Look at the expressions on the faces of these very determined women! I can’t help but to wonder and put myself in their place. How would I react if I had just witnessed the gruesome murder of the One who changed everything about my life, the One who gave me hope? What about you, how do you think you would you react? What would it be like on that very first Easter morning while it was early in the stillness of dark?
Every day we read the faces of people around us. People’s facial expression allow us to read what they are thinking and sometimes grant us permission to see their interior most parts by displaying how they feel.
What do you read on the faces of these women in the painting? Do you see surprise, or would you call it shock? Or is it more an of a comprehensive feeling of complete confusion? I know fear would be a blatant feeling for me based on the multiple of levels horror these women have experienced in the last few days. What about the feeling of curiosity? Are they experiencing awe at the wonder of it all? Did any of them recall the words of Jesus as he said earlier about being raised up back to life? Or are their minds just whirling unable to remember anything? Clearly they were devoted followers of Jesus for three years. They were primary source witnesses at his miracles. They sat attentively to his teachings, hanging on his every word.
Based on Mark 16:1–4, this painting shows Mary Magdalene- one step ahead of the others, Mary the mother of James, and Salome approaching the tomb of their rabbi, Jesus, in the early Sunday morning after his crucifixion. They came with burial spices (look at the lower right corner of the painting) to anoint his body. They came heavy hearted expecting nothing but the worst. Thoughts abounded as they approached. Questions and concerns echoed in their whispered conversations. Could they get into the tomb? Who was going to remove the stone so they could properly anoint the body?
Imagine the women’s response when they found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty! That’s the moment the artist, Henry Ossawa (H.O.) Tanner ,shows us here in the above painting. Just another reason why I love the art of Mr. Tanner. He decided not to paint the Resurrection itself as so many artists have done throughout centuries but he chose to capture more of the emotional reaction of these precious followers of Jesus.
The women are illumined by the light of an angel who is out of the picture frame. Tanner often paints light as messenger. He gives mystery to the viewer. Here, we see Mary Magdalene lifting her hand to her face. Perhaps she is checking her pulse to make sure she is alive to witness what has happened? Directly beside her, the woman of the withdrawn elbows, protects her beating heart. Feeling some reservation, they progress toward the guiding light.
Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) was the oldest of five children. His father, Reverend Benjamin Tucker Tanner, was a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and his beloved mother, Sarah Tanner, a survivor who escaped her enslavers through the cleverness ingenuity of humankind via the gateway to freedom known as the Underground Railroad. Their son’s unusual middle name derived from the name of the town on the plains: Osawatomie, Kansas. It was here where the abolitionist John Brown initiated his famous antislavery campaign. The family settled in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia in 1868. 10 years later in 1879 Tanner enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied under the direction of another American painter, Thomas Eakins. The young Tanner began to exhibit at the Academy and at the Philadelphia Society of Artists.
It was his biblical paintings, inspired in part by his two trips to the Holy Land, that gained him international acclaim. I did my undergraduate thesis on Tanner and in December 2013, I found myself here in Space City for a visit to the Houston Museum of Fine Art. At the HMFA, I had the privilege of seeing the beautiful frothiness of his brushwork work in person for the first time. That exhibition had a survey of more than 100 of his works! If you have not investigated his work, I highly encourage you to seek out more of Mr. Tanner’s paintings. In the art history book, Beholding Christ and Christianity in African American Art, art historian James Romaine identifies Tanner as “the most artistically gifted and theologically astute American painter of biblical subjects.” I love this quote about Tanner being adept at connecting mystery into art, “Tanner paints personal experiences rather than public spectacles,” Romaine continues, “communicating more through suggestion than depiction and urging the viewer to undergo, like the figures in his paintings, their own experience of spiritual sight.” This is my hope as you view this painting: may you experience the Risen Christ and contemplate similar feelings gaining for yourself the gift of spiritual sight when you understand the full meaning of what has happened and put yourself into these women’s sandals.
Alleluia! The Lord has risen!!! He has risen indeed, Alleluia!
Rev. Leesa+
Henry Ossawa Tanner (American, 1859–1937), The Three Marys, 1910. Oil on canvas, 42 × 50 in. Fisk University Art Galleries, Nashville, Tennessee.
