Edward Mitchell Bannister
American, born Canada, 1828 - 1901Untitled (Landscape with reflecting pond), ca. 1885
On view
Oil on canvas
Dimensions8 × 12 in.
Museum purchase, 2008.367
Edward Mitchell Bannister was a self-taught artist who focused on luminous and atmospheric landscapes. In this way, his paintings were similar in style to Barbizon School paintings. While Bannister never traveled to the village in France where the group gathered, he was influenced by their style. This landscape is emblematic of that tradition with its focus on the romantic view of an uncultivated setting.
Bannister was one of the few African American painters of the nineteenth century to win significant recognition. He grew up on the coast in New Brunswick and spent several months working as a ship's cook. After his parents’ death, he settled in Boston, Massachusetts, an important abolitionist city, in 1850. The city provided an economic, artistic, and social opportunity for a successful career as an artist. Aided by his wife and with support from middle-class African American abolitionists, Bannister began his career as a portrait, landscape, and seascape painter.
