Edward Mitchell Bannister

One of the few Black American artists of the nineteenth century to achieve significant recognition during his lifetime, Edward Mitchell Bannister was known for his bucolic landscapes rendered in thick impasto. In 1876, he became the first African American—and the first artist of African descent and Canadian-born painter—to win a major art prize in North America, receiving a bronze medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.[1] Based primarily in Providence, Rhode Island, Bannister drew inspiration from the New England landscape and coastline, often depicting fields, haystacks and waterfront scenes in a softened, harmonious manner reminiscent of George Inness and other Hudson River School contemporaries. He is a co-founder of the Providence Art Club—the third oldest art club in America and the first to admit women—and an original board member of the Rhode Island School of Design.  Bannister is represented in major museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Walters Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Art.

[1] National Museum of American Art, Sharing traditions: Five Black artists in Nineteenth Century America: From the Collections of the National Museum of American Art, (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 70.