The Annunciation

The Annunciation is an 1898 painting by the African-American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner. It depicts the biblical scene of the Annunciation, where the archangel Gabriel visits Mary to announce that she will give birth to Jesus. The painting is held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Description The painting features the archangel Gabriel and Mary during the Annunciation. The event is narrated in Luke 1:26–38, in which Gabriel tells Mary that she will bear Jesus, the Son of God. Perhaps influenced by the fundamentalist teachings of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Tanner uses a column of light to depict Gabriel and paints Mary in peasant clothing with no halo or other discernible holy attributes. This subject treatment differs greatly from other paintings of the Annunciation, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), which a contemporary critic claimed they saw a reminder of in Tanner's The Annunciation. The room where the scene takes place is furnished with textiles, ceramics, and stone flooring—elements that would reappear in Tanner's later biblical paintings. Background Prior to painting biblical subjects, Tanner made two genre paintings depicting African Americans: The Banjo Lesson (1893) and The Thankful Poor (1894). However, he took a new direction following the completion of the latter. According to scholar and family friend William S. Scarborough, Tanner "had always been strongly religious" and that "it had long been the wish of his father's heart that his son should paint Biblical subjects..." As a result, Tanner pursued religious painting, a field that was "ripe for commercial exploitation" at the time. One of his first religious paintings was Daniel in the Lion's Den followed two years later by The Resurrection of Lazarus. Both paintings were exhibited at the Paris Salon and won distinctions.