Gateway, Tangier

After a trip to Algeria in 1908, Henry Ossawa Tanner traveled often from his Paris studio to the western coast of North Africa, where he visited Tangier, Morocco. He shared a fascination with painting the Orient with other French artists such as Eugène Delacroix, who said one must go to Tangier to experience the "rare influence of the sun, which gives penetrating light to all things." In this painting, Tanner captured the intensity of the Moroccan sun as well as Tangier's distinctive architecture. It is unclear whether Tanner painted this image in his Paris studio or on-site, but it may have been a study for a larger work, Entrance to the Casbah, which has a similar composition and was completed a couple of years later.