Edward Mitchell Bannister (November 2, 1828 – January 9, 1901) was an oil painter of the American Barbizon school. Born in Canada, he spent his adult vibrancy in New England. There, along subsequent to his wife Christiana Carteaux Bannister, he was a prominent devotee of African-American cultural and diplomatic communities, such as the Boston abolition movement. Bannister traditional national reply after he won a first prize in painting at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. He was moreover a founding aficionada of the Providence Art Club and the Rhode Island School of Design.
Bannister’s style and predominantly pastoral subject concern reflected his veneration for the French player Jean-François Millet and the French Barbizon School. A lifelong sailor, he afterward looked to the Rhode Island seaside for inspiration. Bannister forever experimented in his artistic practice, and his artwork displays his Idealist philosophy and masterful control of color and atmosphere. He began his professional practice as a photographer and portraitist back developing his better-known landscape style.
Later in his life, Bannister’s style of landscape painting fell out of favor. With decreasing painting sales, he and Christiana Carteaux moved out of their house on College Hill in Providence, Rhode Island. Bannister was overlooked in American art historical studies and exhibitions after his death in 1901, until institutions subsequently the National Museum of African Art brought him encourage to national attention in the United States.
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