Despite the artist’s rather modest inscription, “a hurried study of my dear father,” this serene portrait packs a punch far beyond its diminutive size. Henry Ossawa Tanner portrayed his father, Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1835-1923) wearing the robes of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. A discrete gold cross gleams on his chest. By the time Tanner painted the portrait, his father, long a minister in the Church, had been elected a bishop and was nationally known for his work as a prolific writer and editor of AME publications. Tanner’s reddish brown tones nod to the powerful work of the Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn (whose work is on view in the Jacobs Wing), while his straightforward, unadorned presentation recalls his studies with Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, during the early 1880s. A portrait by Eakins hangs nearby.