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Edward Mitchell Bannister And The Aesthetics Of Idealism, Traci Lee Costa

Art and Architectural History Theses

Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828–1901)—a Canadian-born, black painter who enjoyed a thirty-year career in Providence, Rhode Island—experienced racial discrimination throughout his life and historical marginalization following his death. His identity as an African American during the era of Emancipation and Reconstruction has framed the present understanding of his contribution to the American landscape tradition. This one-dimensional approach neglects his varied intellectual and professional endeavors, as well as his unique position as a freeborn, black artist. Bannister’s manuscript, The Artist and His Critics (1886), indicates that he developed an artistic theory around the philosophies of German Idealism and American Transcendentalism, inspired by …