Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in 1859 in Tennessee. He was a well-known African-American artist best known for his realistic portraits of people of African descent. He had a long and successful career, starting in the 1870s with his commissions for portraits of members of the Hampton Institute, which was founded by Booker T. Washington; of Booker T
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Washington; and of W.E.B. Du Bois, an author of The Souls of Black Folk (1903), which is regarded as one of the most important books of the 20th century. Tanner also painted many notable figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes; Nella Larsen; Jean Toomer; Zora Neale Hurston; Countee Cullen; Richard Bruce Nugent; William Wells Brown; Sarah E.
Watkins; and Jessie Fauset.