Sale 2528 - African-American Fine Art, January 30, 2020

1 c HENRY OSSAWA TANNER (1859 - 1937) Moonrise by Kasbah (Morocco) . Oil on linen canvas, 1912. 540x724 mm; 21x28 inches. Signed in oil, lower right. Provenance: private collection, Chicago; WilliamMcBride, Chicago; by descent to Patrick Jones, Chicago; by descent to Chessie Jones, Chicago; Aaron Galleries, Chicago; Johnson Publishing Company, Inc., Chicago (2007). A contemporary photograph of the painting is in the Henry Ossawa Tanner papers, the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The photograph is ink stamped “Frederick O. Bemm, Photographer Art Institute Chicago” and inscribed “’Morocco’ by Henry O. Tanner, Paris” and “In private collection. Chicago” in ink on the verso. Exhibited: Exhibition of Paintings by Henry O. Tanner , Thurber Art Galleries, Chicago, February 1913. This was Tanner’s second solo exhibition at the Thurber Galleries. In 1913, after Chicago, the exhibition traveled to the Milwaukee Art Gallery, March 6-16 and the John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis, March 21-31 and finally M. Knoedler Galleries, New York in April. We believe this painting is Moonrise by Kasbah due to its particular view of the outside walls, architecture unlike Tanner’s identifiable Tangier subjects, and that by the time of the New York exhibition, Moonrise by Kasbah was no longer on the checklist. Tanner travelled to Tangier and other cities in Morocco in 1912. This painting shows figures outside the stark, steep exterior walls of a Moroccan kasbah. The Thurber checklist includes seven titles of the eleven Moroccan paintings that suggest nocturnes or moonlit subjects. From that list, we have located the following four paintings: Moonlight - Old Buildings (near Ka-hak) , collection of Lewis Tanner Moore, Moonrise - Walls of Tangier , collection of LACMA, Los Angeles, Moonlight - Hebron , collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum and Moonrise - (Walls of) Tangier , collection of Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. [150,000/250,000]