Tree Landscape
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Melvin and H. Alan Frank from the Frank Family Collection
Accession Number
1984.147
Tags
About this artwork
Edward Bannister was a leader in Boston's African American culture in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1870, the artist moved to Rhode Island, where he painted the pastures, marshes, and forests, seeking "the spiritual...in all created things." Tree Landscape evokes the intimate encounter with nature favored by France's Barbizon painters, but Bannister's belief that God might be found in the humblest aspects of the natural world placed him firmly in the American tradition of landscape pa...