About this work
A narrow Moroccan passage opens before you — arched walls in pale plaster, figures moving through dappled shadow, the street dissolving into a luminous, indeterminate distance. Tanner's technique, with its veils of opalescent color built up with a palette knife, gives the impression of a layered past — a mystical place where past and present coexist.
The precise location of the street is unknown, probably one of the many arched passageways near the market; Tanner's lack of specificity, and the traditional garb of the figures, enhance the painting's timeless quality — the scene could represent either a modern-day interlude or a vision of biblical times. The palette leans warm — ochres and pale mauves pushed against cooler shadow — and the figures are handled with Tanner's characteristic restraint: present, human, but never reduced to mere local colour.
Tanner may have used photographs of Tangiers' architecture for earlier etchings and sketches, but he spent several months in the city in the spring of 1912, at just the moment a French government protectorate was established.
Beginning around 1910, Tanner embarked on trips to North Africa where he was especially drawn to the sights and sounds of the markets in Morocco and the architecture of Tangiers.
In 1912, Tanner, his wife, and Australian artist Hilda Rix Nicolas travelled to Tangier — a port city on the Strait of Gibraltar — to paint the Moroccan cityscape en plein air.
During his stay, Tanner painted numerous views of the city's ancient alleys and gateways, and displayed several of his Tangiers canvases in his solo exhibition at the Thurber Art Galleries in Chicago in 1913.
With works like this, Tanner separates himself from traditional Orientalist artists, adopting a style that focuses on daily life and resists a European gaze — using his art to take a stance against the exploits of Orientalism, honouring his own heritage as an African American. The painting is now held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Painted in oil on panel and measuring 23¼ × 26½ inches, this is an intimate work — not a panorama, but an immersion. It belongs in a room that earns its quiet: a reading room or study with warm natural light, a hallway long enough to invite a pause, or a living space where collected objects reward looking. It speaks to the traveller and the contemplative in equal measure — to anyone drawn to the idea that a single street corner, rendered with enough attention and enough honesty, can hold the weight of time. The layered surface rewards proximity; stand close and the paint itself becomes part of the subject.
