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EDWARD M. BANNISTER (1828 - 1901)
Untitled (Cow Herd in Pastoral Landscape)
.
Oil on linen canvas, 1877. 711x1219 mm; 28x48 inches. Signed and dated
in oil, lower left.
Provenance: Harry DeGrummond, Salado,Texas; private collection,Texas
(1980); thence by descent to the current owner, private collection,
Oklahoma. This painting was found in the contents of
Twelve Oaks
, a
historic two-story stone mansion in Salado,Texas, when it was purchased
with the DeGrummond estate in 1980.
Twelve Oaks
was built in 1867 by
Dr. Benjamin McKie (1825 - 1883), and restored by Harry DeGrummond
in the 1930s.The Greek-Revival mansion is on the National Register of
Historic Places.
This impressive scene of a herd of cows in a Rhode Island landscape is a
large and significant mid-career painting by Edward Mitchell Bannister.
The pastoral scene is rendered in rich harmonious tonalities captured in
the light at dawn.The herdsman at the center of the horizon brings the
viewer into a composition that shows Bannister’s affinities with the Barbizon
masters Jean-François Millet and Camille Corot. Upon closer inspection,
Bannister’s impastoed brush strokes and palette knife application in the
foreground also show the influence of Gustave Courbet.
Born and raised in Canada, where the British had abolished slavery, Edward
Bannister was able to demonstrate and develop his talent at a young age.
Working as a seaman, the young man travelled the Northeastern coast until
he found work in the arts hand-coloring daguerreotypes in NewYork. In
the early 1850s, Bannister established himself as a young regionalist painter
in Boston, one of its first African-American artists. He studied at the Lowell
Institute, and received his first commission in 1855. In 1870, Bannister and
his wife moved from Boston to Providence, where he became an active
professional artist and respected leader in the artistic community. Bannister
famously won first prize in painting at the U.S. Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia with
Under the Oaks
in 1876 - beating out such established
figures as Albert Bierstadt and Frederick Church. He had other success with
awards in Boston at the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association in
1878 winning bronze, and in 1881 and 1884 winning silver. Bannister also
helped found the Providence Art Club in 1878, which became the model
for the Rhode Island School of Design. In his Barbizon-like landscapes, he
produced a poetic view of tranquil lands with people and animals in
harmony. According to John Nelson Arnold, a fellow artist and friend,
“Bannister looked at nature with a poet’s feeling. Skies, rocks, fields were all
absorbed and distilled through his soul and projected upon the canvas with
a virile force and a poetic beauty.” Lewis, p. 38; Rodgers p. 12; Salado
Historical Society (brochure) p. 33.
[35,000/50,000]