Van Gogh • Artist Biographies • Edward M. Bannister
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Edward M. Bannister |
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| Birth Year : | 1828 | |
| Death Year : | 1901 | |
| Country : | Canada | |
Edward Bannister was a successful black artist, born in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada, in 1928, and orphaned at 16. He and his older brother went to live with Harris Hutch, who imbued them with the love of music, literature and the arts.
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In 1848, Bannister moved to Boston where he became a skilled barber and a member of the Crispus Attucks Choir and the Histrionics Club, achieving a lofty standing in New England Society. He married Christiana Carteaux, a remarkably successful businesswoman who owned and operated a number of beauty parlors whose list of patrons read like a Who's Who of the Boston elite. He was able to pursue a career in art largely due to his wife's success and was one of the few blacks able to attend the Lowell Institute night school. Little of his work from this period has survived.
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It was in Providence, Rhode Island, where the Bannisters moved in 1870, that Bannister settled into his most mature and productive period. At the time Providence was a center for a number of artists who were strongly influenced by the French Barbizon style. This mode of pastoral landscape painting suited Bannister, whose works reflected his deep love of religion, social purpose and rural life. Bannister continued to be productive up to his death in 1901.
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