Juneteenth and Artist Henry Ossawa Tanner

Juneteenth (June 19) has been recognized as a federal holiday since 2021 when President Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. It became the first new federal holiday since 1983 when Martin Luther King Jr. Day was adopted.

Even though June 19, 1865, was 900 days after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, it was the date that final enforcement of the proclamation was ordered, which occured in Texas. It was therefore the day that many enslaved people first learned of their freedom. It was also 71 days after Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union on April 9, 1865, and 24 days after the disbanding of the Confederate military department covering Texas on May 26, 1865.

On June 19, 1865, Henry Ossawa Tanner, who had been born in Pittsburgh, was five years old; he would be six on June 21. His mother had escaped from slavery and his father was a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent black denomination in the United States. Frederick Douglass was a family friend.

Henry's middle name honors the struggle at Osawatomie between pro- and anti-slavery partisans.

Young Henry grew up to be the first African-American painter to garner an academic art education and to gain international acclaim. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he was a favorite pupil of the great artist and teacher, Thomas Eakins.

However, plagued by racism, in 1891 he went to Paris to study at the iconic Academie Julian, and became one of the best artists of the era.

Racism was not a prominent part of French culture and Tanner remained in France, marrying a Swedish-American opera singer, Jessie Olsson, in 1899.

Much of Tanner's work was inspired by Biblical stories. He won notoriety and many prestigious awards. His painting, Resurrection of Lazarus (1896, in the Muse'e d'Orsay, Paris) was purchased by the French government after it won the third-place medal at the 1897 Salon.

One of the most iconic of Tanner's genre paintings, The Banjo Lesson (1893), a beautiful and sensitive portrayal of a grandfather and his grandson, is currently in the collection of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia.