Bathed with Light

Savor tonight's full moon and this intimate seascape by Edward Mitchell Bannister.

Loosely sketched, the glimmering gray nocturnal effects in the quiet painting reveal Bannister's long study of water, sun, clouds, and other natural phenomena during his days at sea.…

The spiritual quality in Bannister's paintings was a natural outgrowth of his religious nature. Around 1895 he wrote to George Whitaker, "all that I would do I cannot—that is, all I could say in art—simply from lack of training, but with God's help I hope to be able to deliver the message he entrusted to me."

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Sharing Traditions: Five Black Artists in Nineteenth-Century America (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985).

Pictured: Edward Mitchell Bannister, 1828 Canada–1901 USA, Untitled (Moon over a Harbor, Wharf Scene with Full Moon and Masts of Boats), about 1868, oil on fiberboard, 9 5/8 x 15 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of H. Alan and Melvin Frank.