Edward Mitchell Bannister

Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828, 1901) was a pioneering African American painter celebrated for his luminous New England landscapes, seascapes, and pastoral scenes. He rose to national prominence in 1876 when he won the gold medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, becoming the first African American artist to receive a major national art award. A co-founder of the Providence Art Club, which later evolved into the Rhode Island School of Design museum, Bannister was a central figure in American 19th-century landscape painting.