Hebron was an inspiration for Henry Ossawa Tanner, considered to be the first African-American painter to gain international fame. His noted work, the Banjo Lesson (1893) won him acclaim as did Abraham’s Oak (1905) which depicts the famous tree in Hebron.
Curator of American art Dr. Jeffrey Richmond-Moll said the following of the work titled Abraham’s Oak Near Hebron: “Rendered in his signature nocturnal blue palette, Tanner’s painting is as much a portrait of an actual pilgrimage site as it is an inward vision, resonating with mystical feeling and spiritual import. In the dim light, hazy glow, and thick nighttime air, Tanner conjures a cloudy space of recollection, summoning the memory of his own encounter in the Holy Land six years prior, and then transposing it into a mystical apparition from an imagined, primordial past.”
Tanner visited the Land of Israel twice in the 1890s for extended periods to paint and tour, visiting such historic sites as the Western Wall in Jerusalem and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. Tanner wrote, “my effort has been to not only put the Biblical incident in the original setting… but at the same time give the human touch ‘which makes the whole world kin’.”
His Moonlight Hebron (1907) depicts a street scene in the City of the Patriarchs & Matriarchs and today hangs in the Milwaukee Art Museum. Abraham’s Oak Near Hebron is featured at the Smithsonian in Washington DC.
Tanner wrote about his experiences visiting the Land of Israel in a 1909 article for The World’s Work magazine. The following are excerpts:
“… a glimpse of the Holy Land would be beneficial, and thus it happened… Those great barren hills that can blossom like a rose, with irrigation, were to me a natural setting, a fitting setting, to a great tragedy. The country, sad and desolate, is big and majestic… Jerusalem, barren, broken-cisterned, sterile…
Another and longer trip to Jerusalem was now planned… We spent six months painting around Jerusalem and the Dead Sea and this gave me an insight into the country and the character of the people that my shorter visit had only whetted my appetite for…
I still remember with pleasure the old Yemenite Jew… never shall I forget the magnificence of two Persian Jews whom I once saw at Rachel’s Tomb; what a magnificent ‘Abraham’ either one of them would have made..
…nor do I forget the deep pathos of the ‘Jews’ Wailing Place’ – those tremendous foundation stones of that glorious temple that stood upon Mt. Moriah, worn smooth by the loving touch of tearful and devout worshipers from all over the world, under the scornful gaze of the to-day Turkish conqueror.”
NOTES:
- A Souvenir from the Holy Land: On Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Abraham’s Oak – Smithsonian American Art Museum
- The Story of a Artist’s Life by Henry Ossawa Tanner – The World’s Work Magazine, 1909
