Boston Street Scene (Boston Common)

Boston Street Scene (Boston Common) is a 1898-1899 oil painting by African-American artist Edward Mitchell Bannister, made during a visit to Boston, Massachusetts.

Edward Mitchell Bannister, Boston Street Scene (Boston Common), 1898-1899, Walters Art Museum

Bannister was born in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick in 1828. His father was a black man from Barbados, and his mother was a white Scottish-Canadian. He worked as a ship's cook, and settled in Boston in the 1850s, where he became a barber. In 1857 married the successful hairdresser Christiana Carteaux Bannister. His wife encouraged his artistic ambitions, and he shared a studio with Edwin Lord Weeks. He won the bronze medal for first place at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876. The Bannisters had moved to Providence, Rhode Island in 1869, where he was one of the founders of Providence Art Club.

Bannister made the painting during a visit to Boston in the 1890s. The small oil-on-canvas work measures 8 in × 5.5 in (20 cm × 14 cm). It depicts a street scene on the edge of Boston Common, perhaps Beacon Street. Bannister uses the diagonal edge of the sidewalk beside the park to draw the eye into the painting, with two women walking with a baby in a stroller in the right foreground. Traffic is light on the street to the left, just a few horse-drawn carriages, and more people walking on the other side of the street, past buildings of five or more floors. In contrast to his usual paintings of New England landscapes in a realistic manner with a muted natural palette, similar to the French Barbizon school, this work adopts a much brighter, almost Fauvist, palette of yellows, pinks, reds, greens and blues, and a loose Impressionist style.

The painting was bought in 2002 by the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.