Many African Americans pursued opportunities to create paintings, sculpture, and other forms of artistic self-expression. Many, of course, had to create their opportunities to create. In my paper I will compare and contrast a few artist lives and works of art. The four African Americans artist I will talk about are Robert S. Duncanson, Edward M. Bannister, Mary Edmonia Lewis, and Henry Ossawa Tanner —All four free-born.
The differences between art that referred to people’s personal conditions and an art that transcended race and social class are represented by the works of two artists active during the 1860s and 1870s: sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis and landscape painter Robert S. Duncanson.
Mary Edmonia Lewis’s father was a free African-American …show more content…
Duncanson was impeccable when it came to the display of his ability to deal with space by means of aerial perspective like in his works The Blue Hole, Flood Waters, Little Miami and his commission paintings for Nicholas Longworth: The Nicholas Longworth Manson Murals. Duncanson lived in a period of great change, as did Edmonia Lewis, and being of African-American decent undoubtedly forced them to face many social and professional disappointment. Their racial background probably discouraged their recognition as a major contributor to American art; yet there can be no doubt that, with the development of their mature style, Duncanson and Lewis brought American art a personal style high in aesthetic value. A similar political/apolitical separation is present in the work and lives of artists working between 1865 and 1900. First against a social backdrop of liberation and hope and later against one of oppression and despair, landscape painters like Edward M. Bannister and Henry O. …show more content…
Bannister created moody, realistic like art scenes, lacking political jockeying and white-on-black violence that characterized African American lives at the end of the century. Edward Bannister was a prominent landscape painter of the nineteenth century and enjoyed a career notable for the lack of prejudice with which was judged by his peers. Bannister was born in 1828 in New Brunswick, Canada. His mother was of Scottish descent from Canada, his father was a native of the West Indies. Much of Bannister's artistic subject matter from this period was lifted from biblical themes, although he did execute portraits, landscapes, and scenes from history. Bannister's first significant recognition for his paintings came after he moved to Providence, Rhode Island. In 1876 Bannister’s painting “Under The Oaks” won first prize at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. After finding out that Bannister was African American, the judges discussed rescinding the award. However, many of the artists he had competed against stood behind the decision to award the prize to Bannister, and he kept the first-place medal. Winning first-place in the Centennial Exposition brought major recognition to Bannister. He was able to devote all his time to painting, and over the next decade he was commissioned to paint a number of landscapes and
The differences between art that referred to people’s personal conditions and an art that transcended race and social class are represented by the works of two artists active during the 1860s and 1870s: sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis and landscape painter Robert S. Duncanson.
Mary Edmonia Lewis’s father was a free African-American …show more content…
Duncanson was impeccable when it came to the display of his ability to deal with space by means of aerial perspective like in his works The Blue Hole, Flood Waters, Little Miami and his commission paintings for Nicholas Longworth: The Nicholas Longworth Manson Murals. Duncanson lived in a period of great change, as did Edmonia Lewis, and being of African-American decent undoubtedly forced them to face many social and professional disappointment. Their racial background probably discouraged their recognition as a major contributor to American art; yet there can be no doubt that, with the development of their mature style, Duncanson and Lewis brought American art a personal style high in aesthetic value. A similar political/apolitical separation is present in the work and lives of artists working between 1865 and 1900. First against a social backdrop of liberation and hope and later against one of oppression and despair, landscape painters like Edward M. Bannister and Henry O. …show more content…
Bannister created moody, realistic like art scenes, lacking political jockeying and white-on-black violence that characterized African American lives at the end of the century. Edward Bannister was a prominent landscape painter of the nineteenth century and enjoyed a career notable for the lack of prejudice with which was judged by his peers. Bannister was born in 1828 in New Brunswick, Canada. His mother was of Scottish descent from Canada, his father was a native of the West Indies. Much of Bannister's artistic subject matter from this period was lifted from biblical themes, although he did execute portraits, landscapes, and scenes from history. Bannister's first significant recognition for his paintings came after he moved to Providence, Rhode Island. In 1876 Bannister’s painting “Under The Oaks” won first prize at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. After finding out that Bannister was African American, the judges discussed rescinding the award. However, many of the artists he had competed against stood behind the decision to award the prize to Bannister, and he kept the first-place medal. Winning first-place in the Centennial Exposition brought major recognition to Bannister. He was able to devote all his time to painting, and over the next decade he was commissioned to paint a number of landscapes and