Flight into Egypt (Henry O. Tanner painting, 1899)

{{Short description|1899 painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner}}

{{Infobox artwork

| title = Flight Into Egypt (1899)

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| wikidata = Q20182017

| image = Henry Ossawa Tanner - Flight into Egypt - 69.452 - Detroit Institute of Arts.jpg

| image_upright = 2

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| caption = Mary and Joseph flee for Egypt, Mary riding on a donkey, holding baby Jesus.

| artist = Henry Ossawa Tanner

| year = {{start date|1899}}

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| medium = Oil on canvas

| movement = impressionism, symbolism

| subject = Holy Family, Flight into Egypt

| height_metric = 50.2

| width_metric = 64.8

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| height_imperial = 19 3/4

| width_imperial = 25 1/2

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| museum = Detroit Institute of Arts

| city = Detroit

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| accession = 69.452

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Flight into Egypt was a painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner, created in Paris about 1899 and displayed at the Carnegie Institute that year, along with Judas.{{Cite book|last=Mosby|first=Dewey F.|url=http://archive.org/details/henryossawatanne01unse|title=Henry Ossawa Tanner|date=1991 |location=Philadelphia; New York |publisher=Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rizzoli International Publications |others=Philadelphia Museum of Art|isbn=978-0-8478-1346-9|page= 41}} The painting, a religious work, is an example of Tanner's symbolist paintings. The 1899 version was his first version of the painting.{{cite book|chapter= Introduction |last= Marley|first= Anna O. |title=Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit|editor-last= Marley |editor-first= Anna O. |publisher= University of California Press |place= Berkeley |date=2012 |page= 32}}

The painting shows the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt, to save the life of Jesus. The painting's themes were important to Tanner, and he would paint the story as many as 15 times across his lifetime.{{Cite book|last=Mosby|first=Dewey F.|url=http://archive.org/details/henryossawatanne01unse|title=Henry Ossawa Tanner|date=1991 |location=Philadelphia; New York |publisher=Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rizzoli International Publications |others=Philadelphia Museum of Art|isbn=978-0-8478-1346-9|pages= 172–173}} Tanner's background was in the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.), his father Benjamin Tucker Tanner a bishop in the church who wanted his son to follow into the ministry.{{cite journal |title= The Early Religious Paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner: A Study of the Influences of Church, Family, and Era |first= Jennifer J. |last= Harper |journal= American Art |date=Autumn 1992 |volume= 6 |issue= 4 |publisher= The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Smithsonian American Art Museum |pages= 69–72 |doi= 10.1086/424170 |jstor= 3109083 |url= https://www.jstor.org/stable/3109083}} When Tanner persistently chose to paint, his father wanted him to pursue religious themes, to use his paintings as his ministerial voice. Those religious interests included standing up for African Americans, who were living under prejudice.

Tanner painted Flight into Egypt in such a way as to give it universal appeal. Thematically it stood up for the oppressed, through its theme of good people fleeing persecution. Further, its characters, were rendered indistinctly in the twilight, enough that it was difficult to pin them down as being from a particular race or ethnic group; people could imagine their own in the painting.{{Cite book|last=Mosby|first=Dewey F.|url=http://archive.org/details/henryossawatanne01unse|title=Henry Ossawa Tanner|date=1991 |location=Philadelphia; New York |publisher=Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rizzoli International Publications |others=Philadelphia Museum of Art|isbn=978-0-8478-1346-9|pages= 172–173|quote= The lack of articulation in the faces of the figures and the unemphasized Christ Child, who is seen only as a bundle of cloth on Mary’s lap, allows one to see them as ordinary people drawn from the crowds that hurried toward Bethlehem. The biblical figures become timeless travelers, whose anxious journey gives them a universality that extends even to the African-American migrants of Tanner’s time.}}