# Head of a Jew in Palestine

- By: Henry Ossawa Tanner (born Pittsburgh, PA 1859-died Paris, France 1937)
- Date: 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
- Credit line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Robbins
- Museum: [Smithsonian Institution](https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=23660)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/2ca25f7a6c270db79dabb4e1d32cf482.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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.”