Sarah Elizabeth Tanner

Sarah Elizabeth Tanner (May 18, 1840 — August 2, 1914[1]) was active as a missionary worker and a religious leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

[3][1] Charles was the mulatto son of a Virginia planter who took his family to "the free state of Pennsylvania" in 1846, driving them north in an ox cart.

[5] Married to a Methodist minister (later a Bishop), her own religious convictions were strong, and she taught children in her church's Sabbath School.

[7][8] Henry Ossawa Tanner focused his talent on two portraits of his mother, "the central, stabilizing figure in her large and distinguished African American family.

[10] The painting was one of at least three works that her son made which showed African American subjects with an attitude of respect, so different from mainstream portrayals in the late 1890s.