Analysis: The Banjo Lesson

The Banjo Lesson by Henry Tanner is one of his most famous works. The message to the viewer somewhat speaks for itself. Tanner’s work displays a lesson on how the black race broke ground from just being known as entertainers, now being known as an artist in the 19th century to a broad range of important roles in society today. One of Tanner’s painting called /is something I can absolutely relate to, because as a child, I was taught in the same manner with my uncle. The Banjo Lesson was painted in 1893 with Tanner using size and placement as a technique to emphasize the figures of the old man who is teaching the little boy how to play the banjo.

Tanner set the pair in the foreground and poses them so that their visual weight is from a single

It was first presented to me in my U.S. history class, on a rare day when the class did not proceed in the format of a lecture. After a few short minutes of gazing at it, I became captivated by it. It animated for me vividly and personally the infamous struggle for dignity, that colorful and multi-dimensional historical narrative that I had only ever heard about from the black and white pages of textbooks and from evocative but still somehow one dimensional lectures of my teachers. It spoke in immediate and tangible terms about the Harlem renaissance the way Dorothy Lange’s iconic photograph of a migrant mother speaks about the utter unfairness of depression era poverty, expressionist paintings speak about the psychological horrors of industrialism. It brought a level of personal meaning to what I was learning that nothing other than subjective and creative expression could

In The Banjo Lesson he lights up the interior of a rundown dwelling to reveal what might otherwise be missed, the poor glowing with humanity and knowledge. These qualities, so clearly expressed in art, can also be seen in the light of science but because they defy mathematical measurement, they become invisible in cost-effectiveness and other studies, eluding economic analysis and adequate attention. The banjo lesson broke this cliché with its sensitive, sincere and intense interpretation of the individuals that comprise African American communities and their abilities; the musical traditions that are sweetly transferred from one generation to the next within the earthy tones, is indeed a combative work meant to fight cultural norms. In an era where African Americans were viewed as subhuman Tanners reputation as a painter in itself was monumental. Before he became famous his mother Sarah Miller sent him, along with his brothers and sisters, through the networks of the Underground Railroad eventually finding refuge in the Free State of