Article: No ordinary artist: the work of Henry Ossawa Tanner. (biography of the African American painter)

One afternoon in 1872, thirteen-year-old Henry Ossawa Tanner was walking with his father in a Philadelphia park when they came upon an artist painting a picture of an elm tree. Henry was fascinated. He watched for an hour.

"I decided on the spot that I would be an artist," he wrote later, "and I assure you it was no ordinary artist I had in mind.' That night, Henry made a canvas from a piece of awning. The back of an old geography book became a palette. A long talk with his mother resulted in fifteen cents for paints and brushes. The next day, he headed to the park to paint his own picture of the tree.

"Whether I got most of the paint upon the canvas, ...

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