Break for Art | "Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures"

Hello and welcome to Break for Art. My name is Sarah Greenberg and I'm the manager of Adult Programs at the DMA. Today we're going to slow down with Henry Osawa Tanner's Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures. Before we dig in, make sure you're in a comfortable position and set aside distractions that will take you away from the present moment. We will begin with a full minute of immersive looking, but first close your eyes and take a long deep breath. Now let's spend the next minute looking closely at this artwork. If you haven't already, click this video into full screen. Scan the entire canvas. Start in one corner and mindfully move your eyes from side to side, up and down, back and forth. After a minute, we'll slowly explore the work together. If you need longer to look, feel free to pause here and resume the video when you've had adequate time to yourself. As you were looking, what feelings arose? How did taking a full minute to just look make your mind and body feel? Where were your eyes drawn? Did you find your gaze following a path? In this painting, we see an intimate depiction of mother and son nuzzled close together reading from a scroll. Even without the title, we get a sense of the close relationship that these two people share. Christ's weight seems to fall on Mary as she supports him with her upper torso. She delicately wraps her arm around his waist and they tenderly rest their heads against one another. With Mary seated, the pair are just about the same height and occupy most of the composition. Our attention is commanded fully by the solid unity of the figures at center. The only other object in view is the earthen jar that sits to the left of the figures. Why do you think Tanner chose to include this object? What does it tell us about the space that these two inhabit? Tanner presents only a slice of the jar, just enough for us to recognize what it is. By doing this, Tanner suggests that the space we are looking into is a domestic one. The terracotta jar, combined with the lifelike intimacy between Christ and Mary, makes the image accessible to the average viewer. Christ and Mary are not depicted as two untouchable divine figures behind pearly gates, but rather your everyday human parent and child sitting down to read together in private. Do you have any memories of moments like this? Some of this relatability may be the result of Tanner's working method. We know from existing photographs that Tanner used his wife and son for models. This was probably an intentional choice, as the realism and warm familiarity with which Tanner depicts his family helps the sacred scene resonate with modern audiences, and thus aids the painter's purpose as a religious artist. Pressed together, Mary and Christ's bodies form the shape of a triangle. Their feet are firmly planted on the ground, and the density of their robes further emphasize their stability. The triangular shape of their close embrace is echoed in the scroll that begins on the floor on the right-hand side of the painting. It moves upwards and is punctuated where Mary holds it in her hand, arresting our gaze on the central focal point of the painting. It then trails diagonally downward towards the left and outside the frame of the picture. But before our gaze wanders off, the shadows on the hardwood meet the scroll where it grazes the floor and brings our vision across the foreground to the start of the scroll, which directs our eyes to circulate the same cycle once more. Tanner's use of triangles might be understood as a strategy for capturing our attention or underscoring the strength and balance of the subject. What do you understand his use of triangles to mean? Do you see any other triangles in this painting? I want us to take a few minutes to focus on how Tanner utilized color. How many different colors can you see? While Tanner employed various shades, his palette is restricted to four main colors, blue, green, purple, and gold. What emotions or ideas do you associate with these colors? Tanner was heavily influenced by the tonalist and symbolist movements of the late 19th century that relied on color to communicate emotions and ideas to viewers. Subtle color tones comprised of various greens, purples, blues, and grays are thought to be restful and easy on the eye. As a painter of religious art, Tanner's use of these colors helps create a moment of quiet meditation in which viewers like us can connect with our spiritual selves. How do you think your reaction to this painting would change if it was done with warmer tones like red and orange? Within these central color groups, Tanner varied his shading from dark to medium to light tones to help create the illusion of depth as well as draw our attention to certain areas of the canvas. Notice that Tanner reserved the brightest tones for Christ's outfit, almost as if a spotlight is being shown on him. Illuminated in a warm golden light, the figure of Jesus stands out against the darker moody hues that cover most of the painting. This is perhaps the device Tanner used to symbolize Christ's holy status and the insight he derives from the study of scriptures. Sticking to these four main colors in a simplified division of space, Tanner delivers a clear message about his intention for this work of art. He only used the elements that were absolutely necessary to communicate what he wanted to say. Another method that Tanner used to separate space is his brushwork. If we look closely, we can see there are a few distinct ways that Tanner handled his brush here. First, the stone bench and adjoining wall on the right side of the painting are composed of loose long brushstrokes. While there are many different colors in this section, they blend together to create this gradient of bluish greenish tones. In comparison, it appears Tanner's approach to the blue wall backdrop behind the figure's heads is more obvious and erratic. We can see where Tanner laid down his brush with a teal blue, dragged it in a u-like shape along the canvas, and picked it up. He stuck with variations of the same color but makes the form and application more inconsistent. If we narrow in on Christ's robe, we see that Tanner utilized a short, highly noticeable brushstroke laden with paint to capture the scattered reflections of light. Here, he makes little effort to seamlessly merge one color into the next. Finally, taking a detailed look at the heads of Jesus and Mary, we see that Tanner took his time to carefully render their facial features with a more tightly controlled hand. This restraint further humanizes and personalizes the sitters in this portrait. In using both blended and vigorous brushstrokes, we not only get a sense of Tanner's diverse abilities as an artist, but an understanding of what he was attempting to achieve with his art. I encourage you to linger a little longer and see what other discoveries you can make. Thanks for joining me today, and I look forward to breaking for art with you again soon.