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EDWARD MITCHELL BANNISTER (1828-1901)
Artist: Painter, Photographer

Edward Mitchell Bannister is renowned as the first African American artist to win a national art award and the only major 19th century African American artist to study only in the United States. Bannister's marriage in 1857 to Madame Christiana Carteaux enabled him to become a full-time artist, for she was a financially successful hairdresser with salons in Boston, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. Bannister was the first African American artist to receive formal training. In 1862, he studied photography in New York. In 1863, he enrolled in courses at the Lowell Institute in Boston. While living in Boston, he received commissions from white and black patrons for portraits and landscapes. When the Bannisters moved to Providence after the Civil War, Bannister became a founding member of the Providence Art Club. During his Providence years, his painting focused on landscapes and seascapes. Bannister met with critical acclaim and financial success. In 1876, Bannister's painting, Under the Oaks, won first prize at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and was sold for $1,500. He won other medals in the late 1870s and early 1880s at the Boston Charitable Mechanics Association Exhibitions. His popularity and prosperity, however, declined in the final decade of his life. After his death in 1901, friends erected a large memorial stone decorated with a bronze artist's palette near Bannister's grave in Providence.

Born in Canada to Edward Bannister and Hannah Alexander Bannister, Bannister was orphaned as a young boy. He worked for a local lawyer in St. Andrews, New Brunswick until he went to sea as a cook. By 1850, he had moved to Boston and honed his artistic skills while earning his living as a hairdresser. Three years later Bannister began working in Madame Carteaux's salon; they married in 1857. In Boston, the Bannisters played active roles in abolitionist, theatrical, and musical events. In Rhode Island, they owned a summer home; Bannister enjoyed sailing on the Atlantic Ocean. Long after his death, a Boston acquaintance recalled, “He had the same genial, kindly, courteous nature...though life. Bannister from the first followed no master nor any school&emdash;nothing but his own instincts.”