EDWARD M. BANNISTER (1828 - 1901)

At "Smith's Palace", Narragansett Bay.

Oil on linen canvas, circa 1881. 559x762 mm; 22x30 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. With figure sketches in pencil, verso. Provenance: acquired by Anson and France Viets, Springfield, MA (circa 1920s); thence by descent, private collection; private collection, Maine Exhibited: The Twenty-third Exhibition of the Boston Art Club, Boston Arts Club, Boston, MA, January 29 - February 9, 1881, with a fragment of the label on the stretcher bars verso. This beautiful oil painting is a significant example from Edward M. Bannister's mature period of New England landscape painting. Its Barbizon composition, incorporating a copse of trees and a body of water in a pastoral setting, is typical of his Rhode Island landscapes of the late 1870s and early 1880s. An almost identical composition was painted in a well documented watercolor by Bannister that was sold at Swann Galleries on October 4, 2018. This painting will be sold with an exhaustive, 41 page and illustrated authentication analysis by art historian and Bannister expert Anne Louise Avery, dated October 18, 2022. Through her extensive research, Avery identifies the location as "Smith’s Palace”, an old homestead now known as “Smith’s Castle”. The home is one of Rhode Island's oldest, was first built in 1639 and then rebuilt in 1678. It is now a house museum at 55 Richard Smith Drive, near Wickford, a village in North Kingstown, Rhode Island., and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993. The painting will be included in Avery's forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist.