“The Banjo Lesson” as painted by Henry Ossawa Tanner in 1893. Oil on canvas, on exhibit at the Hampton University Museum in Hampton VA.

Tanner is an extraordinary legacy of Black History, as are his works. The Banjo depicted here, and played today, was introduced to America by enslaved Africans, where it soon became popularized here and in Europe.

Henry Ossawa Tanner painted “The Banjo Lesson” after spending some time in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. It had only been a mere 25 years prior that slavery had been abolished. Although Tanner was born in Pittsburgh at the time of “a burgeoning African-American intelligentsia”, his mother was born enslaved and escaped through the Underground Railroad to Pennsylvania. His father was a Methodist minister and an abolitionist.

The time that Tanner spent in Paris particularly intrigued me as a classical musician. It was there that he combined and refined the styles of American realism and European tradition into something of his own. There is a trait of Black Excellence to take something artful and expressive, and enhance it further. Tanner was a master of such traits, and his artwork and family history are valuable pieces of Black History.

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