This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Edward Mitchell Bannister was the best-known landscape painter
associated with Rhode Island in the late 1800s, and was the first
African-American artist to win national recognition. At the
Philadelphia World Centennial of 1876, Edward Bannister was the only
New England artist to win a bronze medal.
Born and raised in the
small seaport town of St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada, Bannister was
the son of a black man from Barbados and a white woman from Canada. All
British provinces abolished slavery shortly after Bannisters birth,
giving him the latitude to develop his interest for art, studying the
major established artists, while living as a free Black. His mother
encouraged his interest in art, and he made his earliest studies, in
drawing and watercolor, at the age of ten. Harris Hutch introduced
Bannister and his brother to the classics of music, literature, and
art.
During these formative years, he spent every opportunity
doodling with crayons and charcoal. By the time he was sixteen, both of
his parents had passed away, prompting a more rapid maturation. After
working as a cook on vessels on the Eastern seaboard, he moved to
Boston with his brother in 1848, where he set himself up as a barber
serving the black community.
During the 1850s and 1860s he
learned the technique of solar photography, a process of enlarging
photographic images that were developed outdoors in daylight, which he
continued to practice while working in Boston and New York. Documented
paintings from this time include religious scenes, seascapes and genre
subjects, for example the noted Newspaper Boy (1869), a rare study of
urban black experience.
By the mid 1860s, he was studying under
Dr. William Rimmer at the Lowell Institute and painting landscapes,
portraits, religious, and genre subjects. Bannister loved visiting
museums, libraries, and art galleries. Envisioning the potential for
photography as an art form, he became an early painter of photographs.
He married New York businesswoman Christina Carteaux after meeting her
through a black drama group, and it was her stature that probably
allowed and encouraged him to become a full time, established painter.
Although
he never took formal art training, he was one of a few blacks who
attended the Lowell Institute evening program. Financial freedom
allowed him to open his own studio, and he painted in a vigorous
Barbizon mode, focusing on natures changing moods. Often he included
well-drawn and painted figures reacting to the drama of a natural
scene, as in Approaching Storm (1886, oil on canvas). Bannister
attributed his art talents to his belief in God.
By 1870, when
he and Christina moved to Providence, Rhode Island, his landscapes were
showing the influence of the Barbizon style, and his work had reached a
maturity, infused with his spiritual and emotional responses to nature.
His work flourished and his paintings were collected by such patrons as
George T. Downing (1819-1903), a wealthy local entrepreneur, and the
black soprano Matilda Sissieretta Jones (1868-1933).
Bannister
was the only New England artist to win a bronze medal at the 1876 World
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia for his creation, Under the Oaks,
(untracked), which made him the first African American artist to win a
national award. A contemporary, in referring to Under the Oaks,
described it as a 'simple composition, quiet in tone but with strong
oppositions' ('Reminiscences of George Whitaker', Providence Magazine,
Feb. 1914).
Bannister drew inspiration from Millet and the
Barbizon School. While he was conscious of his rights as an American
citizen, he did not bring politics into his art but aimed to win
recognition for his achievement in landscape painting. He exhibited at
the National Academy of Design in 1879.
Edward Bannister was
one of the most respected artists in Providence, which was home to many
pastoral landscape artists. Bannister was one of the founders of the
Providence Art Club, which later assisted in the development of the
Rhode Island School of Design.
During the Civil War, he became an advocate of rights for the Union black soldiers.
The
last part of his life was marked by ill health and declining patronage,
which did not, however, deter him from maintaining a productive output,
with 27 paintings dating from the 1890s. Bannister and his wife
remained in Providence until his death in 1901.
Sources:
Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art
Samella Lewis, African American Art and Artists
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Biography from Roger King Fine Art, A - G:
| Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901) was the first African-American to
win major national recognition as an artist. He was born in
Canada and served on some Canadian vessels in an unknown capacity
before moving to Boston where he worked as a barber while trying to
establish a career as a portrait painter. He married Christiana
Carteaux, a successful businesswoman who owned several hairdressing
salons; the two were active in Boston Abolitionist activities.
In 1869 the couple moved to Providence, and in 1876 Bannister was
awarded a bronze (first-prize) medal at the Philadelphia Centennial
Exposition. He submitted his painting Under the Oaks with
no identification other than his signature and later recalled that when
he appeared before the awards committee to claim his prize, "an
explosion could not have created more of a sensation in that
room." Bannister was deeply committed to fostering the
development of art in Providence, and along with colleagues George
Whitaker and Charles Stetson was a founder of the Providence Art
Club. He was an avid sailor and made frequent sketching
expeditions along the Southern New England coast aboard his yacht
'Fanchon.'
Well-educated and highly spiritual, Bannister was
greatly influenced by the French Barbizon school, whose serene view of
nature and sympathetic portrayal of laborers coincided with his own
belief in "the harmony in all created things." He also admired
the work of American painter Washington Allston, and shared similar
interests in Biblical and mythological themes.
Bannister was largely self-taught as an artist, though he studied
briefly with William Rimmer of Boston. Few of his portraits and
still lifes survive, and he is best known for his moody, contemplative
landscapes and coastal scenes of Rhode Island and southeastern
Massachusetts. Bannister was always conscious of his limited
formal training and set rigorous technical goals for himself,
reportedly destroying his works when they did not please him. As
his career progressed, the prominence of both animals and figures in
his paintings receded, and his most successful paintings exhibit a
masterful handling of atmospheric effects, land, and water. By
the end of his career, he had achieved a lush, unencumbered style that
captured an acute sense of time, place, and mood. He was
generally acknowledged as a painter of "poetic sensibility," a
description that is still apt today.
c Roger King Fine Art, Newport |
Biography from Borghi Fine Art:
| Edward Mitchell Bannister was one of the best-known landscape painters
associated with Rhode Island in the late 1800s, and was the first
African-American artist to win national recognition.
At the Philadelphia World Centennial of 1876, Edward Bannister was the only New England artist to win a bronze medal.
Born
and raised in the small seaport town of St. Andrews, New Brunswick,
Canada, Bannister was the son of a black man from Barbados and a white
woman from Canada.
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Edward Bannister is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Black American Artists
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