Henry Ossawa Tanner

Christ Walking on the Water, 1910

Medium; etching in black on laid paper, Dimensions: plate: 18.42 × 24.13 cm (7 1/4 × 9 1/2 in.)

sheet: 20.48 × 26.04 cm (8 1/16 × 10 1/4 in.), Accession Number: 2015.19.3016

Corcoran Collection (The Evans-Tibbs Collection, Gift of Thurlow Evans Tibbs, Jr.)

~JTMT-Did You Know~

Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in Pittsburgh in (1859-1937), the first of five children born to Reverend Benjamin Tucker Tanner, a future bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Sarah Tanner, a woman who had escaped her enslavers via the Underground Railroad.

In 1891 Tanner proceeded to Paris and commenced study under Jean-Joseph Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian. Tanner soon joined the American Art Students’ Club and spent his first summer in France with the colony of artists at Pont-Aven, Brittany. Tanner’s choice of subject matter was influenced by a growing consciousness of his racial identity, and during a trip to the United States in 1893 he delivered a paper entitled “The American Negro in Art” at the World’s Congress on Africa in Chicago. His concern during this period for creating dignified and sympathetic portrayals of Black people in art is exemplified by The Banjo Lesson (1893, Hampton University Museum, Virginia).

~JTMT_Insights~

In the painting below, Mr. Tanner did an excellent job depicting Jesus walking on water. While studying the painting, it reminded me of “True Faith”, and how we start off confident and strong and end in doubt. As Peter began walking across the water, when Jesus summoned him, he was confident and focused on Jesus and WALKED.

But as he took his focus off Christ, he became afraid and began to drown. Think of the times you did this, you start off in “True Faith”, strong, confident, and focused on Christ: then something, like the boisterous winds, grabs your focus off Christ. And as you lose focus, you began to drown-drown in your troubles, sorrow, or pain.

Not really realizing, because you took your eyes off Christ, is the reason, you began to feel afraid. And as fear crept in, it began to make you doubt in Christ, in yourself. But, it isn’t that Christ is not there, it is because you doubted his abilities and lost hope in Him.