Untitled (Flight into Egypt)

From his 1879-1885 studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with Thomas Eakins and Thomas Hovenden, Henry Ossawa Tanner—the leading Black American painter working in the late 19thto early 20th-century U.S. and France—followed the academic process of preparing preliminary oil studies for his paintings. This vivid sketch is linked to Tanner’s Flight into Egypt, of 1923, in The Met’s collection, with the notable difference of the figural group pictured retreating rather than advancing—that is, facing back versus forward. This dynamic oil study reveals much about the physicality of Tanner’s increasingly experimental wet-in-wet layered painting style, focused on achieving fresh effects of color and texture with thickly and quickly applied brushstrokes and use of a palette knife. As a mature work by the artist, the composition is also more experimental than some of his earlier, pre-World War I Flights, a favorite biblical subject (he produced at least fifteen versions between 1899 and 1932). The Met’s painting was one of two Flights featured in Tanner’s January 1924 solo exhibition of nineteen religious painting at New York’s Grand Central Art Galleries. This last major showing of the artist’s work was well received by critics, with his “unself-conscious painting” deemed “aesthetically and emotionally successful”—expressing the “mood of brooding mysticism that has always been the keynote of his work.”