Picturing the Word
Flight into Egypt (1923) Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) Oil on canvas.
Picturing the Word
by Jennifer Nelson
The three Magi who came from afar to pay homage to the newborn King of Kings, Jesus, broke their journey with a visit to King Herod. Herod had not known of this miraculous event, but he began to wonder whether this new king would be a challenge to his own sovereignty. Concluding it probably was, he decreed that all male children under the age of two in the Bethlehem region be killed (The Slaughter of the Innocents as it is often called.)
Meanwhile an angel appears to Joseph in dream and tells him that he should flee with his family out of Judea and into Egypt. And he did, creating great “picture-ops” for painters and other artists from at least the 5th century. This episode is called The Flight into Egypt.
Tanner’s version of this episode is dark and scary, and the color blue dominates the canvas. The scene takes place in the night, and only one spot is illuminated, by the lantern carried by their guide. In that spot of light Mary cuddles the baby Jesus as she rides a donkey. Joseph is in partial shadow following her. Because of the predominant blues and blacks and greys, the scene looks cold. And with the guide’s almost ghostly aloofness, it looks like one more difficult and lonely journey for the Holy Family.
Henry Ossawa Tanner was American by birth, although he spent most of his working life in France, where his work was well received. His father was a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and his mother had escaped from slavery via the Underground Railroad. Henry Tanner studied at the Pennsylvania Academy under Thomas Eakins, but in 1891 he went to France to study and finding less racism and enjoying more support as an artist, he remained there for the rest of his life.
Two things struck me as I studied this painting. First, the pure evil of our treatment of Blacks, artists or not. And second, the millions of migrants and refugees who are even now on their own “flights into Egypt”—desperate, cold, hungry journeys—who find doors and borders locked tight when they arrive.
