American Art Collaborative

During the 1850s and 1860s, Edward Mitchell Bannister visited the Boston Athenaeum, where he likely saw the work of American artist William Morris Hunt, who had painted in the Barbizon woods of France. Hunt’s serene paintings of the French countryside were prized by art collectors and influenced many Boston-area artists, and it is likely that Bannister hoped such scenes would bring him similar success. (Hartigan, Sharing Traditions, 1985