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Head of a Jew in Palestine
Henry Ossawa Tanner (born Pittsburgh, PA 1859-died Paris, France 1937)
1899, reworked ca. 1918-1920
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 24 x 21 1/4 in. (61 x 53.9 cm)
- Culture
- Jews
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Robbins
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Henry Ossawa Tanner used the local people as models in his religious paintings during his trips to the Middle East and North Africa. He may have used this portrait for the figure of Nicodemus in Nicodemus Visiting Jesus, painted in Jerusalem in 1898. This old but dignified man made quite an impression on Tanner, who later wrote, “I still remember with pleasure the fine head of the old Yemenite Jew who posed for Nicodemus.”
