About this work
*In Constantine* deposits the viewer squarely inside one of North Africa's most architecturally dense and visually startling cities. Constantine occupies a rocky, diamond-shaped plateau surrounded, except at the southwest, by a precipitous gorge through which flows the Rhumel River — and Tanner's canvas absorbs that verticality. The painting renders the city's built fabric in his characteristic cool register: stone walls and arched passageways steep in the afternoon shadows, whitewashed and ochre surfaces dissolving into the muted blues and blue-greens he had made his signature. His works reflect meticulous attention to detail and loose, expressive brushstrokes; often both methods are employed simultaneously. Tanner was also keenly interested in the effects that color could have in a painting. Here, light filters obliquely into the scene, flattening the middle distance and giving the architecture a quality that is at once observed and felt rather than topographically mapped.
After a trip to Algeria in 1908, Tanner traveled often from his Paris studio to the western coast of North Africa , and *In Constantine* belongs to this sustained engagement with the Maghreb. Tanner would make multiple trips to Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco in his lifetime, creating numerous paintings, and he would incorporate details noticed on these trips in his paintings. Constantine was no passing sketch stop. A related work — mislabeled "French Chateau — A Study" — appears to be another version of *In Constantine*, executed in oil on board at 19 × 12 inches. That Tanner made preparatory studies of the subject confirms the weight he gave it. The city's layered history resonated with a painter who had already spent years looking for places where beauty and spiritual seriousness coexisted: the Casbah of Constantine, a maze-like old town, showcases traditional Algerian urban design, with narrow, winding streets, whitewashed buildings, and beautifully adorned doorways that transport visitors back in time.
On the wall, *In Constantine* rewards living with. It is not a painting that announces itself loudly — it settles, and then it deepens. The cool stone palette and compressed architectural geometry make it at home in spaces with natural light, linen, and raw plaster — a reading room, a hallway where the eye needs somewhere to travel. Tanner painted landscapes, religious subjects, and scenes of daily life in a realistic style that was never merely documentary
