The Banjo Lesson

Between the old man and the small boy in Henry Ossawa Tanner's Banjo Lesson, a wooden banjo is held on the child's lap. The banjo is a West African instrument. It came to the Americas on slave ships. By the time Tanner painted this in 1893, the banjo had been stolen from Black musicians for decades and caricatured by white minstrel shows. Tanner painted the scene with the composition and light Western art had used for centuries to show religious teaching: an elder passing knowledge to a child. He was taking the banjo back. The Salon in Paris accepted the painting the following year. Now at Hampton University Museum, Hampton @hamptonumuseum