John Banister
Artist: Robert Feke (American, 1706/7-1752)
Date: 1748
Dimensions:
Painting: 50 9/16 × 40 9/16 in. (128.4 × 103 cm)
Frame: 57 3/4 × 48 1/4 × 1 3/4 in. (146.7 × 122.6 × 4.4 cm)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott
Object number: 1945.16
Label Text:Robert Feke is often considered to be the first significant American portraitist born in this country, rather than Britain. He emerged in the early 1740s as a leading portrait painter in Boston and in Newport, Rhode Island.
Feke portrays John Banister (1707–1767) of Newport as a man of prominence and affluence, wearing an elegant white satin brocade waistcoat, velvet jacket, and fashionable powdered wig. He gestures to a landscape with a harbor in the background, reference both to his status as a landowner and as a merchant trader and shipbuilder. The ship also points to another way Banister made his wealth: as a slave trader, prospering in the triangle trade of enslaved humans, cash crops, and manufactured goods (especially glassware, pottery, and textiles) between West Africa, the West Indies, and New England.
Banister owned enslaved Africans himself—documents have revealed some of the men’s imposed slave names: Anthony, Tony, Mingo, and Cato. The triangle trade, with enslaved Africans and their descendants at its core, was largely responsible for the wealth of the Colonies, wealth that made it possible for Colonists to own the luxury goods displayed in this gallery.
Feke portrays John Banister (1707–1767) of Newport as a man of prominence and affluence, wearing an elegant white satin brocade waistcoat, velvet jacket, and fashionable powdered wig. He gestures to a landscape with a harbor in the background, reference both to his status as a landowner and as a merchant trader and shipbuilder. The ship also points to another way Banister made his wealth: as a slave trader, prospering in the triangle trade of enslaved humans, cash crops, and manufactured goods (especially glassware, pottery, and textiles) between West Africa, the West Indies, and New England.
Banister owned enslaved Africans himself—documents have revealed some of the men’s imposed slave names: Anthony, Tony, Mingo, and Cato. The triangle trade, with enslaved Africans and their descendants at its core, was largely responsible for the wealth of the Colonies, wealth that made it possible for Colonists to own the luxury goods displayed in this gallery.
On view
In Collection(s)