HALIFAX.- This is the first exhibition of Edward Mitchell Bannister’s work presented in Canada—124 years after the artist’s death. Born in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, Bannister was an accomplished, nineteenth-century African American painter known for pastoral landscapes. In addition to being a respected painter and abolitionist (with his wife Christiana Carteaux Bannister), he won first prize at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia for his painting Under the Oaks (now lost), making him the first African American/Canadian to win a major American art prize. While Bannister is increasingly revered in the United States, he remains largely unknown in Canada.

Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901) was born in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick. His family lived in a segregated Black village at the eastern end of Saint Andrews colloquially referred to as Slabtown. Bannister was orphaned at age sixteen and left in the care of Harris Hatch, a wealthy lawyer, merchant, and Registrar of Charlotte County, for whom the artist’s mother had worked as a maid. Bannister’s interest in art emerged early and, by his teens, there are accounts of his drawings appearing on the barn doors and fences of Hatch’s farm. Much of his early life was overshadowed by the limited job opportunities and racism Black New Brunswickers faced. In 1850, Bannister and his brother, William, moved to Boston, where Edward worked as a barber ad eventually met Christiana Carteaux, a hairdresser, wigmaker, and entrepreneur of mixed African American and Narragansett heritage. Bannister married Carteaux in 1857, and she helped him become a successful professional artist in Boston and later Providence, Rhode Island.

David Woods is a largely self-taught, multidisciplinary artist and arts organization leader from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He was the organizer of the province’s first Black History Month (1984) and the founder of several arts and cultural organizations, including the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia (1992). He has curated pioneering exhibitions of African Nova Scotian art, such as In This Place (1998), which featured over 100 years of African Nova Scotian artmaking, The Secret Codes: African Nova Scotian Quilts (2012-2024), and Hidden Blackness: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901).

Organized and circulated by the Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, and the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia (BANNS).

The exhibition is on view at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia through January 11, 2026.