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WINTER 2011 | ARTS
woman named Christiana Carteaux in 1857 and Rhode Island became Edward Mitchell BannisKnown primarily for landscapes, Bannister was drawn to the gauzy realism of the Barbizon School, a mid-nineteenth century French move-
had little artistic training to speak of—the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 would probably have prohibited him from visiting a museum. So it often comes as a shock to people when
Montford told Tribe, it sometimes obscures the him being human has sort of not really been emlisher of The Liberator around a table with all those folks as an equal,
by Soren Sorensen
N plaques, engraved stone or other prominent sig-
nage in and around building entrances, beneath countless names, some likely familiar to you but maybe many more that are unfamiliar. College campuses are perfect for this. At Rhode Island
someone, and each individual namesake has a story—some more singular and improbable than the others. Such is the curious case of Edward Mitchell Bannister, the namesake of Rhode IsE.M. Bannister Gallery.
Resources among them—but Bannister Gallery and the story of the painter for which it is named are a little different. Edward Mitchell Bannister was born in 1828 Barbados in the West Indies. By 1844, both of was living in Boston. Between odd jobs, including a stint as a cook at sea, Bannister learned to paint, met and married a wealthy Rhode Island
life would be incomplete without mention of his him. Ray Rickman, president of the Rickman Group and former State Representative from Tribe, feminist statement, was made by Edward Ban-
A few years before they were married, Bannister worked for his future wife in a beauty salon she owned on Washington Street in Boston. She sold restorative hair treatments, perhaps not Sweeney Todd history and all things Bannister, Rickman told Tribe the empty containers that once held product sold
a very unique position because he was younger than her and she bought him a yacht so he could
eral local patrons and he did make money from his art. But his wife really was the breadwinner.