Bannister, Edward Mitchell

c. 1826
January 9, 1901

Edward Mitchell Bannister was born sometime between 1826 and 1828 in St. Andrews, a small seaport in New Brunswick, Canada. His father Edward Bannister, probably a native of Barbados, died in 1832, and Edward and his younger brother, William, were raised by their mother, Hannah Alexander Bannister, a native of St. Andrews. Bannister's artistic talent was encouraged by his mother, and he won a local reputation for clever crayon portraits of family and schoolmates.

By 1850 Bannister had moved to Boston with the intention of becoming a painter, but because of his race he was unable to find an established artist who would accept him as a student. He worked at a variety of jobs to support himself and by 1853 was a barber in the salon of the successful African-American businesswoman Madame Christiana Carteaux, whom he married in 1857.

Bannister continued to study and paint, and he began winning recognition and patronage in the African-American community. In 1854 he received his first commission for an oil painting, from African-American physician John V. DeGrasse, titled The Ship Outward Bound. By 1863 Bannister was featured in William Wells Brown's book celebrating the accomplishments of prominent African Americans (Brown, 1863). His earliest extant portrait, of Prudence Nelson Bell (1864), was commissioned by an African-American Boston family.

Bannister was active in the social and political life of Boston's African-American community. He belonged to the Crispus Attucks Choir and the Histrionic Club. His colleagues included such leading black abolitionists as William Cooper Nell, Charles Lenox Remond, Lewis Hayden, and John Sweat Rock. He was an officer in two African-American abolitionist organizations (the Colored Citizens of Boston and the Union Progressive Association), added his name to antislavery petitions, and served as a delegate to the New England Colored Citizens Conventions in 1859 and 1865. In 1864 Bannister donated his portrait of the late Col. Robert Gould Shaw to be raffled at the Solders' Relief fair organized by his wife to assist the families of soldiers from the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Colored Regiment.

Bannister is said to have spent a year in New York City in the early 1860s apprenticed to a Broadway photographer; he advertised himself as a photographer from 1863 to 1866. An 1864 photograph of Bannister's early patron Dr. DeGrasse survives from that period. Bannister continued to paint and win commissions, and although he listed himself in city directories as a portrait painter until 1874, works like his Untitled [Rhode Island Seascape] and Dorchester, Massachusetts, both painted around 1856, document his beginning interest in interpreting the New England landscape.

In the mid-1860s Bannister began to receive greater recognition in the Boston arts community. Sometime between 1863 and 1865 he received his only formal training, studying in the life-drawing classes given by physician and artist William Rimmer at the Lowell Institute. Bannister took a studio in the Studio Building from 1863 to 1866, where he was exposed to William Morris Hunt's promotion of the French Barbizon painters, and his paintings began receiving favorable notices from Boston critics. His growing confidence as an artist is indicated in two tightly painted monumental treatments of farmers and animals in the landscape, Herdsman with Cows and Untitled [Man with Two Oxen], both completed in 1869.

Bannister was part of a community of African-American artists in Boston in the 1860s. Sculptor Edmonia Lewis had a studio just two doors from him in the Studio Building; portraitist William H. Simpson was a neighbor and fellow member of the Crispus Attucks Choir and the Histrionic Club; and the young painter Nelson Primus sought out Bannister when he moved to Boston in the mid-1860s.

In 1869 the Bannisters moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where Bannister was immediately recognized by its growing art community. His first exhibit included Newspaper Boy (1869), one of the earliest depictions of working-class African Americans by an African-American artist, and a portrait of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

Bannister came to national attention in 1876, when his four-by-five-foot painting Under the Oaks won a first-prize medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. This bucolic view of sheep and cows under a stand of oaks received widespread critical acclaim. But Bannister later remembered how, when he stepped forward to confirm his award, he was "just another inquisitive colored man" to the hostile awards committee.

Recognition for Under the Oaks brought Bannister increasing stature and success. By 1878 he sat on the board of the newly created Rhode Island School of Design, and he and fellow artists Charles Walter Stetson and George Whitaker founded the influential Providence Art Club. From 1877 to 1898 Bannister's studio was in the Woods Building, along with those of artists John Arnold, James Lincoln, George Whitaker, Sidney Burleigh, and Charles Walter Stetson. His Saturday art classes were well attended, and he won silver medals at exhibitions of the Boston Charitable Mechanics Association in 1881 and 1884. He exhibited throughout his career at the Boston and Providence Art Clubs, and also in New York City, New Orleans, Detroit, and Hartford, Connecticut. His work was much in demand by New England galleries and collectors, and in 1891 the Providence Art Club featured thirty-three of his works in a retrospective exhibition, to favorable reviews.

A number of Bannister's paintings, including Woman Walking Down a Path (1882), Pastoral Landscape (1881), Road to a House with a Red Roof (1889), and Seaweed Gatherers (1898), reflect his strong affinity for the style and philosophy of such Barbizon artists as Jean-François Millet and Camille Corot. But Bannister drew from numerous sources throughout his career, producing work in a variety of styles and moods, from serene vistas such as his Palmer River (1885), to the Turner-influenced dramatic skies of Sunset (c. 1875–1880) and Untitled [Landscape with Man on Horse] (1884), to free and lushly rendered views of woodland scenery such as Untitled [Trees and Shrubbery] (1877), in order to express what he described as "the infinite, subtle qualities of the spiritual idea, centering in all created things."

Although he is remembered primarily as a landscape painter, Bannister also drew his subjects from classical literature (Leucothea Rescuing Ulysses, 1891), still life (Untitled [Floral Still Life], n.d.), and religion (Portrait of Saint Luke, n.d.). His prolific output as a marine painter is represented by numerous drawings, watercolors, and paintings such as Ocean Cliffs (1884), Sabin Point, Narragansett Bay (1885), and Untitled [Rhode Island Seascape] (1893).

As in Boston, Bannister associated with, and his work was collected by, leaders of Rhode Island's African-American community. Bannister and his wife continued their involvement in the concerns of their church and community. In 1890 Christiana Carteaux Bannister led the efforts of African Americans to establish a Home for Aged Colored Women in Providence, which is today known as the Bannister Nursing Care Center.

Although he had been experiencing heart trouble in his later years, Bannister continued to paint. Indeed, his late works (Street Scene, c. 1895; The Old Home, 1899; Untitled [Plow in the Field], 1897) reveal an openness to experimentation and growth, with an increasingly abstract consideration of form and color on canvas.

On January 9, 1901, Bannister collapsed at an evening prayer meeting at the Elmwood Street Baptist Church and died shortly thereafter. Held in great esteem by Providence artists and patrons, he was the subject of lengthy tributes and eulogies. In May 1901 his friends in the Art Club organized a memorial exhibition of over one hundred Bannister paintings loaned by local collectors. Later that year, Providence artists erected a stone monument on his grave in North Burial Ground. Christiana Carteaux Bannister died two years later.

See also Art; Painting and Sculpture

Bibliography

Brown, William Wells. "Edward M. Bannister." In The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements. New York: Thomas Hamilton; Boston: Wallcut, 1863. Reprint, New York: Kraus Reprint, 1969. Also available from <http://docsouth.unc.edu/brownww/brown.html>.

Hartigan, Lynda Roscoe. "Edward Mitchell Bannister." In Five Black Artists in Nineteenth-Century America (exhibition catalog). Washington, D.C., 1985.

Holland, Juanita Marie. The Life and Work of Edward Mitchell Bannister: A Research Chronology and Exhibition Record. New York: Kenkeleba House, 1992.

Holland, Juanita Marie. "Reaching Through the Veil: African-American Artist Edward Mitchell Bannister." In Edward Mitchell Bannister, 1828–1901 (exhibition catalog). New York: Kenkeleba House, 1992.

juanita marie holland (1996)
Updated bibliography