Mathews's standard biography of Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), based on extensive research in archives in this country and family records in France. An important artist in the salons of Paris, Tanner was born and studied in Philadelphia but left America for Europe, where his race would not stand in the way of his ambition. Providing a full account of the artist's life and art, Henry Ossawa Tanner gives readers insight into the art trends of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as into the struggle of African Americans of this period.

" Tanner] ranks not only as...