Scripture · Luke 5:6
Luke 4:40
He Healed the Sick #11
At sunset, all who were ill with various diseases were brought to Jesus, and laying His hands on each one, He healed them.
People gather beneath a great tree in a small, thickly painted scene. Tanner brings a broad healing subject into a panel only about thirty-three centimeters wide.
About the artwork
A large tree shelters a gathering, but the figures have different relationships to it. Some cluster beneath the trunk; others approach across the open ground. The contrast between waiting and arriving gives the healing theme a social setting: people come toward others who are already assembled.
The panel is only about thirty-three centimeters wide, and its textured paint keeps the people from resolving into a tidy row of individual portraits. The conservator who examined it for the 2019 Sotheby’s sale compared the surface to glazed ceramic and identified the exposed light undercolor as intentional. Those pale interruptions are part of Tanner’s working method, rather than gaps the viewer should mentally fill with invented detail.
Featured in: Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Bible Paintings: Humiliated at Home, Honoured in Paris
What does Luke 4:40 mean?
Luke 4:40 follows Jesus’ healing of Simon’s mother-in-law in Capernaum. At sunset people bring those suffering from different diseases, and Jesus lays His hands on each one. The verse holds together the scale of the gathering and the individual attention given within it.
That distinction helps a viewer look into Tanner’s crowd rather than treating it as an undifferentiated mass. The passage gives the healing theme a human rhythm, one person after another. It does not identify the individual figures or establish that this panel depicts only the Capernaum evening.
Luke 4:40 brings individual attention into the crowded subject: each sufferer receives care within the larger gathering.
Sources
private collection (Sotheby’s New York, 2019); oil on board, 23.5 × 33 cm. Exact panel, circa 1930. The surface observations come from the 2019 condition report; no current condition claim is made. The meaning of “#11” in the sale title remains undocumented.
Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Bible Paintings: Humiliated at Home, Honoured in Paris. Artwork reading adapted from this guide.
Luke 4 — Berean Standard Bible. Context for Luke 4:40.
Also from Luke:The Angel Appearing to ZachariasAnnunciation
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