The name Lewis Tanner Moore kept popping up on the auction sheet in descriptions of several pieces of artwork. I recognized the names of the artists, including Allan Freelon and Paul Keene, both acclaimed Philadelphia artists.
I have an etching of Freelon’s that I bought at auction some years ago, and I saw an exhibit of his works at the Woodmere Museum in 2004. I also have a watercolor from Keene’s Cape May series.
But in my wanderings I had missed an even more historical item that had belonged to Moore. Rob Goldstein, the resident art expert at Barry S. Slosberg Auctioneers, guided me to a fantastic piece in an area near the front.
It was an antique walnut clock that had been in Moore’s law office. It was described on the auction sheet as a Renaissance Revival Bank Clock with twin dials and marked “Made in America, patent (?) 15, 1876.” The wall clock was large, measuring 59″.
“He made it a centerpiece in his law office,” said Goldstein. “It was something of a local legend.”
Looking at it, I could see why: it was impressive. The clock, though, was not the only piece that Goldstein pointed out to me. Across from it was a massive desk with a thick plate of glass on top. It was described as a late 19th-century R.J. Horner-style partner’s desk with elaborately carved winged legs.
That, too, had come from the law office, which, according to Goldstein, had been a prominent fixture in the African American community in South Philadelphia. “To think about what that desk means historically,” he said.
The clock, desk and several lots of artwork had come from the estate of Richard Baxter Moore, the son of Lewis Tanner Moore who himself was the nephew of African American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner. Some of the artwork, according to the bid sheet, had belonged to Lewis Tanner Moore.
Just as these pieces had flowed from father to son, the love of art apparently had also been inherited or embedded in the genes.
Lewis Tanner Moore was one of the founders of the Pyramid Club along with some of Philadelphia’s most prominent doctors, lawyers and judges. They first met in the basement of a YMCA and then in Moore’s law office as they organized their new social club, building for themselves a place where they would not be shut out as they were from white establishments. Finally in 1937, they had both a club (for African American men only) and a name. More than a dozen years later, the membership would be made up of more equally impressive names, with others on the waiting list.
The Pyramid Club became just as noted for its art exhibitions, which attracted black and white artists. The exhibits ran from around 1941 to 1957, curated by artist Humbert Howard. The first show included such artists as Dox Thrash, Claude Clark, Raymond Steth and Samuel Brown. The club also held lectures, fashion shows, weddings and other events, and honored such names as Langston Hughes and Duke Ellington.
Moore got to know many of the artists who exhibited in the Pyramid shows. “Freelon, Keene and Moore were friends,” said Goldstein. “He knew most of the major and lesser-known African American artists in Philadelphia.”
The Freelon painting at the auction – a 1928 oil on canvas of a village scene in Gloucester, MA, where Freelon spent the summers from his job in the public school system – was a “gift” from the artist to Moore, according to Goldstein.
Lewis Tanner Moore, who died in 1977 at age 77, was the son of a man who had been among the black elite. His father Lewis Baxter Moore was the first black man to receive a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1896 and was a dean at Howard University in Washington, according to an obituary in the Baltimore Afro American newspaper. The father’s first wife Sadie Elizabeth Tanner was the sister of Henry Ossawa Tanner (not sure if this was Moore’s mother; she apparently died in 1900).
Moore had practiced law for 50 years and was working up until a few weeks before he died, according to the obit.
His grandfather was Benjamin Tucker Tanner, an African Methodist Episcopal bishop who was the father of Henry Ossawa Tanner. His cousin Sadie T. Alexander was the first black woman in this country to receive a doctorate and a law degree (both from Penn).
Moore himself apparently worked as a law clerk in 1928 in the law firm of another well-known Philadelphia attorney, Raymond Pace Alexander, who was practicing along with his wife Sadie T. Alexander.
At auction, the clock sold for $14,000 and the desk for $12,000. The Freelon painting went for $8,000. It had been part of the 2004 exhibition at Woodmere, according to Goldstein. The Keenes sold for $425.
