The Good Shepherd (Atlas Mountains, Morocco, Section)

Tucked into the bottom right corner of this canvas is a tiny shepherd, hemmed in by a flock of sheep and dwarfed by the massive cliffs of Morocco's Atlas Mountains. Henry Ossawa Tanner painted this around 1902, pulling from his travels across North Africa and the Middle East. The title points to the biblical figure of the Good Shepherd, a subject he came back to again and again, mixing real places he had seen with a quiet sense of the sacred.

Tanner was an American painter and the son of a minister, and he holds the distinction of being the first African American artist to win international acclaim. Worn down by prejudice at home, he moved to France, where his work found a warm reception. His talent for soft, glowing light shows clearly in the hazy greens, golds, and browns that give these mountains an almost dreamlike feel. The rough, layered brushwork lends the rock a weathered, timeworn look.

Instead of putting the shepherd front and center, Tanner hands the spotlight to the landscape itself, a choice that quietly underlines how small one figure can seem beside the scale of nature. The result is a peaceful, meditative scene that grows richer the longer you spend with it.