Henry Ossawa Tanner's 'Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City' Enters White House Collection

Henry Ossawa Tanner's 1885 oil on canvas 'Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City' became the first painting by a Black artist to enter the White House permanent collection in 1996. The work, measuring 151 cm by 77 cm, depicts a beach landscape in Atlantic City, New Jersey, with sand dunes, wild grasses, rolling waves, and a visible moon. Tanner, born in Pittsburgh in 1859 to a former slave mother and a bishop father, studied under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, embracing American Realism and direct observation. He rejected the Académie des Beaux-Arts' classical subjects and smooth finishes, instead mixing beach sand into the paint for texture. The painting blends photographic realism with painterly expressionism, using focused elements like the moon and sailboats against an Impressionistic blur. A large shadow across the foreground adds depth and a sense of time. Tanner left the U.S. for Paris in 1891 due to racism, spending the rest of his life there. His work is also held in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 2018, Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald became the first Black artists commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery for presidential portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama.