Sarah Elizabeth Tanner

Mrs. Sarah Tanner with her husband Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner.

Sarah Elizabeth Tanner (May 18, 1840 — August 2, 1914 ) was active as a missionary worker and a religious leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

She was the wife of Benjamin Tucker Tanner. She was the mother of the artist Henry Ossawa Tanner and the physician Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson, and the grandmother of civil rights activist Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander.

She was the subject of two portraits by her son, his Portrait of an Artist's Mother and Mother of Henry O.

Biography Sarah Tanner was born in Winchester, Virginia as Sarah Elizabeth Miller, the daughter of Charles Jefferson Miller (1808 — 1856 ) and Louise (Saunders) Miller (1809 — ? Alternatively, the family may have moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1843. Sarah's father took work as a porter in Pittsburgh, but died when she was 16. In this version of the story, the family was divided up by the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society, and Sarah was sent to Pittsburgh.

Portraits

Henry Ossawa Tanner focused his talent on two portraits of his mother, "the central, stabilizing figure in her large and distinguished African American family."

Henry painted the earlier image (Portrait of the Artist's Mother) during a visit home in 1897. However his parents did not stop his dreams, even offering financial support. The painting is an example in which Henry mixed American Realism with Impressionism in a style also seen in two other works, The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful Poor.

The second image Mother of Henry O. is closer in style to his later impressionist-style paintings.