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Edward Mitchell Bannister

(1828-1901)

Untitled (Rhode Island Seascape).

Oil on Masonite board, circa 1880s.
Initialed, lower right.
4 x 14 in. (10.2 x 35.6 cm.), Frame: 6 3/4 x 16 1/2 in. (17.1 x 41.9 cm.)

  • Provenance:
    Private collection, New York.
  • Notes:
    Edward M. Bannister and his brother William worked aboard ships as mates and cooks for several months before immigrating to Boston in the late 1840s. After meeting his wife, Christina Chareteaux, the two moved to Providence in 1871. In the 1880s, Bannister bought a small sailboat called the Fanchon, and spent summers sketching, painting watercolors, and sailing Narragansett Bay and up to Bar Harbor in Maine. He would return with his studies and use them as the basis for winter commissions. A lifelong sailor, he also looked to the Rhode Island seaside for inspiration. Bannister continually experimented, and his artwork displays his Idealist philosophy and his control of color and atmosphere.

    Untitled (Rhode Island Seascape) is a scarce example of Bannister's maritime seascapes and experimentation with elongated horizontal formats. This genre of narrow, extended vistas of breaking waves and beach scenes were very popular in the 1870s and 1880s amongst the plein air French schools in Normandy and Brittany, and many American artists, such as Alexander Harrison's The Wave, circa 1885, in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

    Thank you to Anne Louise Avery, art historian and Edward Bannister expert, for her review of this painting. It is to be included in Avery's forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist.
  • Condition:
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April 2, 2026 12:00 PM EDT
New York, NY, US

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