, particularly black Americans, in France has been most strongly documented.
The reasons for black Americans' presence in France from the nineteenth century onward may readily be inferred from the legacy of slavery in the United States. As the late nineteenth century moved into the twentieth, discrimination against blacks in America increased, notably by means of the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1883 articulating racial segregation as the law of the land, a black presence in France increased. Unable to assimilate into the social mainstream even after Emancipation, blacks, and particularly black artists, who desired to participate in a mainstream culture appear to have found a haven in France. In this connection, Chase and Baker note France's historic fascination with what was perceived as the exoticism of black people, citing Robespierre's black coachman, who comported himself in African tribal dress (Chase & Baker, 1993, p. 106). There seems to have been something of an exoticism associated with black persons' life styles in France to the degree they existed in the context of the arts. And to the degree black artists found a ready acceptance in French society that was unavailable in America, one artist's story seems like another's.
One example in this regard was Henry Ossawa Tanner, who was intended by his father for the ministry but instead got admitted in the 1880s to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Skeel, 1991). He was the only black student at the academy and could not make a living as a painter. In 1891, he emigrated to Paris to study there. Over the next five years, he began to specialize in painting biblical scenes, selling his painting "Resurrection of Lazarus" to the French government in 1896 (Phillips, 1975a). As a successful painter, Tanner was able to start a family, marrying a singer from Sweden. Throughout this period, he was visible in the Paris salons, leaving France with his wife and...