Scripture · Exodus 2:3
Genesis 19:24-25
Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
Then the LORD rained down sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens. Thus He destroyed these cities and the entire plain, including all the inhabitants of the cities and everything that grew on the ground.
Dark smoke rises above a landscape crossed by broad brown diagonals. Lot and his daughters are barely visible at the lower right of Tanner’s panorama.
About the artwork
Tanner gives the catastrophe most of the picture. The High Museum identifies Lot and his daughters at the lower right, but their small figures offer little interruption to the smoke and broken-looking ground. The painting asks the eye to move across a devastated landscape before it discovers the people who have escaped.
Tanner painted this version in tempera and varnish on cardboard. Across its broad surface, green-blue colour unites the smoke and distant atmosphere, while bare brown slopes lead the eye toward the tiny survivors. The High Museum describes the effect as an almost unearthly luminosity. The catastrophe is carried by the whole landscape, rather than by a close view of bodies in distress.
Featured in: Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Bible Paintings: Humiliated at Home, Honoured in Paris
What does Genesis 19:24-25 mean?
Genesis 19:24–25 describes the destruction of the cities and the surrounding plain. Just before these verses, Lot reaches Zoar; afterward, Abraham looks toward the plain and sees smoke rising like that from a furnace. The passage brings together the scale of the catastrophe and the survival of one household.
Verse 29 explicitly connects Lot’s escape with God remembering Abraham. Tanner’s small figures keep that rescue within the larger scene without allowing it to dominate the view. The painting’s smoke corresponds to the narrative’s aftermath; its color and sweeping diagonals are the artist’s means of picturing it.
Genesis 19:24–29 lets us read both parts of Tanner’s landscape: destruction across the plain and the small surviving family at its edge.
Sources
High Museum of Art, Atlanta (49.32); tempera and varnish on cardboard, 51.8 × 91.4 cm. Exact 1929–1930 High Museum work: medium, Lot and his daughters at lower right, dominant greenish-blue colour and luminous effect.
Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Bible Paintings: Humiliated at Home, Honoured in Paris. Artwork reading adapted from this guide.
Genesis 19 — Berean Standard Bible. Context for Genesis 19:24-25.
Also from Genesis:Elohim Creating AdamThe Creation of Adam
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