Flight Into Egypt

Henry Ossawa Tanner

1923 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

This evocative "Flight into Egypt" is a mature work by Tanner, the leading early 20th-century African American artist who studied in Paris and resided in France—largely due to the systemic racism he encountered in the United States. As he declared in 1891, the year of his departure for Europe: "I cannot fight prejudice and paint at the same time." Having begun his career painting moving images of African American life, by the mid-1890s he had shifted to more universal biblical themes familiar from his childhood; his father, Benjamin Tanner, was a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. To represent these stories, the artist developed an increasingly painterly, highly personal style based on direct observation and imagination. The subject of this work, which he depicted frequently, represents the Holy Family's escape from King Herod's assassins (Matthew 2:12–14). In personal terms, it conveyed Tanner’s sensitivity to issues of personal freedom and mobility, perhaps including the Great Migration of African Americans from the South after World War I. On the back of this canvas is a study for Tanner’s prizewinning "Christ at the Home of Lazarus", painted around 1912 and now known only from photographs

Artist

Henry Ossawa Tanner

Date

1923

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Marguerite and Frank A. Cosgrove Jr. Fund, 2001