Yes and no. I have a previous comment on this, which I'll paste below:

This is one of the few cases where the popularly-held view about the past is correct! Yes, for centuries the western ideal was very pale. It's simplistic to attribute this solely to the practical consideration of pale:leisured::tan:pleb, though - white skin was beautiful in the Middle Ages in the same way that long blonde hair, dark eyebrows, a slender figure, and a cleft chin were. All standards of beauty are socially-constructed in some way; it's generally held that the preference for bright lips and cheeks in women have to do with showing signs of healthiness (though a recent argument put forth in Carolyn Day's Consumptive Chic says the opposite - that these are signs of tuberculosis - but I have some issues with that), but that doesn't mean that fifteenth century swains were consciously thinking, "Lady Kathryn's lips are like cherries, therefore she is hale and hearty and may survive longer than her pale-cheeked sister." The background reason is not more important than the actual lived experience Europeans had for centuries of simply associating soft white skin with beauty and refinement, and we shouldn't foreground it simply because we no longer think of tanned skin as unattractive. "Fair" originally had the sense of "beautiful" before it came to be a synonym for lightness/paleness by the thirteenth century - that's how deep this goes.

Tanned skin began to be found attractive in the late nineteenth century, as outdoor athletic activities became something of a mania. Croquet, tennis, bicycling, hiking, sea-bathing, and so on were activities that required leisure time, specialized equipment, appropriate attire, and either space at home or travel to the spaces where you could do them, so they were restricted to those who could afford to do all of that (which is of course still true today). As a result, developing a tan to some degree from these sports could show that you were able to do them - were rich enough and had enough time to visit the Adirondacks or the seashore.

From "Water Sports" in Vacation Time, with Hints on Summer Living, by Dr. Henry Shipton Drayton (1891):

The pale anaemic, dyspeptic city-girl, who has the opportunity to indulge her taste for a daily row on a quiet lake or country stream, will, in the course of her vacation, acquire the brown skin of the village lass, and find the sleeves of her muslin jacket getting too tight for the expansion of her biceps muscles.

From "The Preservation of Beauty in Summer" in McCall's Magazine (August 1901):

Poets have sung the charms of the "nut-brown maid," and it is not to be denied that a good coat of tan is very becoming to many people. If our annual seaside jaunt had no worse effect on our tender skins than the transforming of a fair complexion to one of rich olive tone we should have very little to complain of. Unfortunately, however, the effect of the sea breezes is not always so happy. I have a vivid but uncomfortable recollection of a sweet girl friend who gaily departed for the seashore last year, laughingly ignoring my advice to "take care of your skin," and emphatically stating her intention of sitting on the sands every morning - "so the sun will nicely brown me, and everyone will know how much I've been enjoying myself!" [...]

Some people's skins are so hardy that the elements have no more effect upon them than to give them a deeper or richer tone, rather becoming than otherwise; people with very dark or sallow complexions and dark hair are less likely to suffer from sunburn than those with fair skins and light hair, but there are few women who can afford to ignore ordinary precautions for preserving their complexions during the hot summer months.

However, there was a general idea that tanned skin had its place. It was appropriate in casual dress, in the summer, in the country - but you didn't want to look frazzled and unevenly-complected in your decent clothes, particularly not in evening or ball dress.

From "To Tan or Not To Tan", by Celia Caroline Cole, in The Delineator, June 1919:

To be tanned or not to be! Whether it's better to be pink and frilly or to be browned with the wind of the sea or the sun of the tennis-court while the joy of the unbound outdoors sings in your heart - that's the June question. How are you going to answer it? [...]

If you are the kind of person who has an idea she is not nice when she is tanned, then this program [of sunbathing] will not be easy for you. But please do be absolutely sure that it is not becoming to you to be tanned. It is better for your skin to tan than to powder and rouge and wear shade hats all Summer. [...]

Suppose you do want to tan but do not want the tan to last all Winter. Personally, I have yet to meet the tan that will last all Winter, but suppose you want to get of it before you get into town clothes that need pinkness and whiteness to carry them off. That's a simple matter. Every night put on your skin food and every day apply a bleach and the trick is done. [...]

Just a nice, comfortable, careless tan is what every woman ought to have in Summer if she wants to help her skin all she can. It is becoming to nearly every one in light clothes and it is good for the skin.

From "Overcoming Summer Sun and Wind", by Nora Mullane, in Good Housekeeping, November 1919:

After a glorious summer spent out of doors, the majority of young girls come back badly tanned or freckled, because they have neglected, in all their enjoyment, to give their complexions the necessary care. Perhaps they have wished to become tanned, as in sports clothes girls find it becoming, but when they return to town they find it out of place and immediately wish to return the skin to its natural color. It is with this thought in mind that we have endeavored to find remedies which will enable them to redeem their good looks without ruining skin. Health is the cornerstone of beauty, but not all healthy people are beautiful.

During the 1920s, it's clear that there was a shift in the perception of suntans, where they went from a deliberate choice that showed how sporty you were to something almost required for fashion. People like to attribute the popularity of tanning to Coco Chanel in the 1920s, but the fact is that, like the many other things said to have been done by Chanel simply to please herself and then copied by the rest of the world, there's little proof. Health Horizons, written by Emma Dolfinger in 1931, actually notes the deep, deliberate suntan (or "beach complexion") as a specifically American fashion, originating here in 1923-24 and only reaching Paris, and therefore Chanel, in 1927. In the 1930s, you could buy any number of oils and lotions to supposedly help protect the skin while still allowing it to tan deeply, as well as skimpier swimsuits that would let more skin meet the sun, creating the suntan situation that would be the norm for the next several decades before the dangers of skin cancer became clear.

At the same time, it's important not to forget that the appeal of creamy, soft, white skin never went away. Fashion illustrations and advertisements still showed beautiful, pale women; female movie stars still needed to have a certain amount of milkiness in their skin. Ads for cosmetics explicitly or implicitly touted the smooth whiteness of their models' faces. I don't really study the later twentieth century (or twenty-first century), so I can't go into when the "go to salons/use a lotion or spray and have a deep tan all year" trend began, but I just want to make it clear that the post-1920s attitude toward tans, despite being more positive than, say, the 1820s attitude, was not exactly the same as the way many see them today.