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Islam's Holy Month

In the Muslim calendar, today begins the month of Ramadan, when followers of Islam fast during the daylight hours to worship Allah.

American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) went to the near East in the early 1900s, where he depicted Muslim cities, including this scene in Tangier, Morocco.

Tanner was born in Pittsburgh of English, African, and Indian ancestry. He spent over half of the rest of his life in France, there finding an expansive and more accepting environment, free from the racial strife found in much of the U.S. In Paris the artist attained an international reputation for his poignant paintings of biblical themes.

In 1910 Tanner spent several months in North Africa. Morocco and its seaport, Tangier, inspired numerous richly textured, colorful oil sketches, among them Palais de Justice, Tangier. Its figure group strongly resembles Tanner's many versions of the Flight into Egypt.

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Sharing Traditions: Five Black Artists in Nineteenth-Century America (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985).

Pictured: Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1859 USA–1937 France, Palace of Justice, Tangier, about 1912–1913, oil, 25 5/8 x 31 7/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Baxter.