Feb 17, 2011 - Sale 2237

Sale 2237 - Lot 3

Price Realized: $ 4,200
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,000
EDWARD M. BANNISTER (1828 - 1901)
Untitled (Dockyard Scene).

Conté crayon and pastels on beige wove paper, circa 1870s. 203x273mm; 8x10 3/4 inches, full margins.

Provenance: private collection, Newport, RI; private collection, New York.

This drawing of the Charleston Navy Yard, later known as both the Boston Navy Yard and Boston Naval Shipyard, is situated where Boston's Charles and Mystic rivers meet. Edward Bannister, a long-time Boston resident, was quite familiar with the area's nautical life, and is known for his maritime scenes. His Charleston Navy-Yard, an oil painting exhibited at the Providence Art Club in November 1891, but whose location is now unknown, depicts a related view of the same subject. This work is likely from part of a sketchbook, and may have been a preperatory sketch for that painting.

Art historian Anne Louise Avery describes the key components indicating Bannister's technique: "Here, a sunset colors the Yard with soft blues and pinks and imbues the work with a luminist delicacy that contrasts and harmonizes, in a typical Bannisterial manner, with the great structural forms of the ships and shiphouse."

We would like to thank Anne Louise Avery for examining this drawing. It will be sold accompanied by her letter of opinion confirming the attribution.