Landscape near Newport, R. I.

Painted in 1877 and held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, this coastal landscape near Newport, Rhode Island by Edward Mitchell Bannister shows his mature practice applied to one of New England's most beautiful coastal locations. Newport, with its dramatic coastline, rocky promontories, and the particular quality of Atlantic light, attracted many American painters in the nineteenth century. Bannister's Barbizon-influenced approach—attentive to atmospheric conditions and tonal unity rather than sharp detail—was well-suited to capturing the broad, atmospheric quality of the Rhode Island coast.

Bannister renders the Newport coastal scenery through broad, tonal handling that captures the Atlantic light's atmospheric diffusion. The rocky coastal foreground transitions to the open water and sky beyond through careful gradation of cool grays and blues, with his characteristic soft, enveloping atmospheric treatment that avoids the sharp edges of academic landscape.