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 painting. Another of the artist’s Rhode Island scenes won first prize at Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition of 1876, an unprecedented recognition for an African American painter of his time.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006