Abstract
THERE ARE ELEMENTS in the life story of Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) that sound almost like Hollywood stereotypes: a strict minister father forces his son to labor in a flour mill but can-not thwart the boy's urgent wish to become a painter; a generous patron finances his flight from provincial America to cosmopolitan Paris, where he mingles with artists and contracts a near-fatal disease; success at the Paris Salon underwrites his marriage and a country house in Brittany; newer trends in painting bypass the frustrated and forgotten painter, who dies in relative obscurity.