Philadelphia's Fairmount Park inspired the greatest African American painter of the 19th century, Henry Ossawa Tanner, to pick up a brush. Tanner's name is less familiar than his work. His genre scenes such as The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful Poor hang on the walls of doctors' offices and government buildings across the country. His religious and historical paintings were exhibited in France's prestigious Musee d'Orsay. Born into an elite African American family - his father was a college-educated A.M.E. minister and his mother a freewoman - Tanner's path as an artist was anything but linear. Tanner spent the first five years of his life in Pittsburgh, but it wasn't until the family moved...
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