Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "The Banjo Lesson" in English language version.
Tanner began studies in 1893 for another picture of Breton life, The Young Sabot Maker... in the first part of 1893, Henry came down with typhoid fever... [quoting Tanner:] 'When I was well enough to travel, I returned to Philadelphia for a convalescence'...
1710 TANNER (H.-O.). La Leçon de musique
In 1895, I painted 'Daniel in Lions' Den.'...It was exhibited in the Salon of 1896..
{{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)In 1895, I painted " Daniel in Lions' Den."...It was exhibited in the Salon of 1896..
In 1893, at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, he exhibited The Banjo Lesson, one of his best known works, which featured an elderly black man instructing a boy to play the banjo. His success in the U.S. using blacks as subjects in his painting allowed him to return to Paris where his painting The Music Lesson qualified him to exhibit in the Parisian Salon.
His style sits somewhere between Realism and Impressionism, the result of his training in the United States and his experiences in Paris, and it develops into something entirely original and personal...Realism – the lives of normal everyday people were dignified and given value
In 1894, The Banjo Lesson was admitted into the Paris Salon, the most prestigious annual juried exhibition in the city. Robert C. Ogden, a philanthropist and chair of the then Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute's Board of Trustees, bought the painting and donated it to Hampton in November of 1894.
During a visit to the Tanner home in Le Douhet, France, in 1987, I found a study photograph for The Banjo Lesson presumably taken by Henry Ossawa Tanner. This would suggest that he developed the painting from posed models in his Paris studio. But it is still believed that the painting was made in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since it was exhibited there at Earl and Sons Gallery from April 28 to May 5, 1894.
The Banjo Lesson not only gave America its first recognized genre painting of Blacks by an African American artist; it also served as Tanner's first accepted work at Salon of 1894.
In order to make sense of Tanner's African American genre a white viewer would have needed to subvert in himself or herself the "naturalness" of racial ideology that made African American men in this period either childlike comic Sambos or vicious, bestial, animal-like rapists of white women...would have needed to deracialize his or her response to works of art...
In this same year, he created one of his famous works The Banjo Lesson while he was in Philadelphia. His depiction incorporated a series of sketches he had made while visiting the Blue Ridge Mountains, four years earlier. The sketches he had made during the summer of 1888 had opened his eyes to the poverty of African Americans living in Appalachia.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)DescriptionExhibition History: Salon de 1895, Société des Artistes Français, Paris, May 1–June 1895, no. 1796 (as Le jeune sabotier).
H. O. Tanner, the colored artist of this city, whose picture, "The Bagpipe Lesson," was exhibited at the Academy during the last exhibition, sailed for Paris yesterday. He expects to remain abroad about three years.
Mr. Tanner has just sent his "Banjo Lesson" which was exhibited at Earles' some time ago, to the Paris Salon. He will go to Paris himself some time in the fall, and will remain there two or three years.
For a few days past there has been exhibited in the window of a local art store a very interesting study of negro life by Henry O. Tanner. The picture, which shows an old man seated before the fire giving his little grandson a lesson on the banjo, is in many respects a creditable piece of work. The conflicting lights, one from the window and the other from the fire, have been conscientiously studied and rendered, and as to character the picture could not be better...
...he was sick at heart to learn of the extent to which race hatred continued. The growing negative depictions of blacks, through minstrel shows and other media, were at a high point...he responded eloquently...As a result, in 1893 he crafted "The Banjo Lesson"...
Henry O. Tanner is at present busy on a picture intended for the December exhibition at the Academy. The picture was begun sometime ago in Brittany, and represents a father teaching his son to play a bagpipe. The picture is full of spirit, the intense interest of the old man in the boy's progress and the rather spasmodic efforts of the red-faced boy to fill the instrument with wind possessing a quiet humor that is bound to make the picture popular.
The chair is placed in the center of the room, equidistant from the fireplace and the window. Tanner didn't even have to tell us there was a window or a fireplace, the way he gorgeously painted the light tells us as much. The characters are right on the line of the warmth of the fire and the cold of the outside.
He would first draw a series of studies sometimes from magazines like Harper's Young People magazine, which he used to create The Banjo Lesson painting.