Edward Mitchell Bannister

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Edward Mitchell Bannister (ca. 1828 - January 9, 1901) was an African American painter whose tonalism and predominantly pastoral subject matter owed much to his admiration for Millet and the French Barbizon School. He was born in St Andrews, New Brunswick, moving to New England in the late 1840s, where he remained for the rest of his life. While Bannister was well-known in the artistic community of his adopted home of Providence, Rhode Island and admired within the wider East Coast art world (he won a bronze medal for his large oil "Under the Oaks" at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial), he was largely forgotten for almost a century for a complexity of reasons, principally connected with racial prejudice.

With the ascendency of the Civil Rights movement in the 1970's, his work was again celebrated and collected. In 1978, Rhode Island College dedicated its Art Gallery in Bannister's name with the exhibition : "Four From Providence ~ Alston, Bannister, Jennings & Prophet". This event was attended and commented on by every notable political figure of the time, and supported by the Rhode Island Committee for Humanities and the Rhode Island Historical Society. Events like this, across the entire cultural landscape, have ensured that his artwork and life won't be again forgotten.

Although primarily known for his idealised land and seascapes, Bannister also executed portraits, biblical and mythological scenes, and genre scenes. A intellectual self-didact, his tastes in literature were typical of an educated Victorian painter, including Spenser, Virgil, Ruskin and Tennyson, from whose works much of his iconography can be traced.

Bannister died in 1901 while attending a prayer meeting at his church. He is buried in the North Burial Ground in Providence.

[edit] Important works

The Newsboy [Boston Newsboy] [Newspaper Boy] (1869; Oil; 30 1/8 x 25 inches; NMAA, Washington D.C.)
Sabin Point, Narragansett Bay (1885; Oil on canvas; Gardner House, Providence, Rhode Island)
Palmer River (1885; Oil on canvas; Private Collection)

[edit] Bibliography

Anne Louise Avery, The Veiled Landscape: Space and Place in the Art and Life of Edward Mitchell Bannister [Unpublished PhD Thesis including a Catalogue Raisonne, 2007]
Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson,A History of African American Artists from 1792 to the Present, (Pantheon, 1993).
Juanita Marie Holland and Corrine Jennings, Edward Mitchell Bannister [Exh. Cat.] (New York: Kenkeleba House, 1992)