Untitled

Born in Canada to a Barbadian father and a mother of Scottish ancestry, Bannister lived as a free man during the era of slavery in America. Upon the death of his parents, he moved to Massachusetts, a free state, where he met his wife, businesswoman, hairdresser, and abolitionist Christiana Carteaux. Through the support of his wife and a community of prominent abolitionists in Boston, and later Providence, Rhode Island, Bannister became a respected and successful painter of landscapes, portraits, and seascapes. He served as one of the original board members of the Rhode Island School of Design in 1878 and two years later helped found the Providence Art Club, an important organization of artists, amateurs, and art collectors created to stimulate the growth of art within the city. Motivated by an article in the Boston Herald, which claimed that Black artists were inherently incapable of becoming great artists, Bannister was determined to beat the odds. He achieved critical acclaim in 1876 when his work, Under the Oaks, received a first prize in painting at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. When he was denied entry into the exposition to accept the award because of his race, his fellow artists rallied to his defense.

Bannister's Untitled, ca. 1870s, features a solitary figure walking through a wheat field towards a distant lake, a pastel-infused sky radiating a soft light on the horizon. A stand of majestic trees casts a long, irregular shadow. This painting is a rare and powerfully scaled example of Bannister's work that links past, present, and future as the figure traverses the landscape in steady pursuit of an unknown destination. Like many of Bannister’s paintings of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, its subject matter does not present a clear reading. Bannister’s compositions often speak to his belief in the powerful impact of nature’s creation, as a supernational force extending beyond human influence and dominance.