1925 (ca.), Henry Ossawa Tanner, On the Road to Emmaus -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
From the museum label:
The son of an African Methodist Episcopal bishop, Henry Ossawa Tanner depicted religious themes in both obvious and subtle fashion. Here, he painted a scene from the Gospel of Luke in which the resurrected Jesus encountered two of his disciples near the town of Emmaus, seen in the background. The dark blue sky and full moon near the horizon indicate that it is early evening and the two disciples invite Jesus, who they do not recognize, into their home to dine with them.
Several of Tanner's late religious pictures depict individuals traversing landscapes, often matching contemporary images of the modern-day Middle East. The sympathetic portrayal and individualized faces of the figures reveal the artist's larger concern with racial liberation and Christian redemption. This painting demonstrates Tanner's increasing embrace, in his later career, of abstracted, glazed passages and loose, painterly modeling of forms.
1925 (ca.), Henry Ossawa Tanner, On the Road to Emmaus -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
From the museum label:
The son of an African Methodist Episcopal bishop, Henry Ossawa Tanner depicted religious themes in both obvious and subtle fashion. Here, he painted a scene from the Gospel of Luke in which the resurrected Jesus encountered two of his disciples near the town of Emmaus, seen in the background. The dark blue sky and full moon near the horizon indicate that it is early evening and the two disciples invite Jesus, who they do not recognize, into their home to dine with them.
Several of Tanner's late religious pictures depict individuals traversing landscapes, often matching contemporary images of the modern-day Middle East. The sympathetic portrayal and individualized faces of the figures reveal the artist's larger concern with racial liberation and Christian redemption. This painting demonstrates Tanner's increasing embrace, in his later career, of abstracted, glazed passages and loose, painterly modeling of forms.