[14]: 42  Patronage like DeGrasse's was critical to Bannister's early career, as the African American community wanted to support and highlight its contributions to high culture.

[12]: 23  African Americans found portraiture an "ideal medium" for expressing their freedom and opportunity, which is probably why most of Bannister's earliest commissions are within that genre.

[10]: 95 [11]: 63 Through abolitionist newspapers like The Anglo-African and The Liberator and the writings of Martin R. Delany, Bannister likely learned about other African American artists like Robert S. Duncanson, James Presley Ball, Patrick H. Reason, and David Bustill Bowser.

[10]: 32  Although most cultural institutions barred Black Bostonians from entrance, Bannister would have had access to several, like the Boston Athenæum library, with collections of European art sources and exhibitions of Luminist marine painters like Robert Salmon and Fitz Hugh Lane.

[1]Bannister was part of Boston's African American artistic community, which included Edmonia Lewis, William H. Simpson, and Nelson A.

Bannister and Carteaux were devout members of the militant abolitionist Twelfth Baptist Church,[10]: 50  located on Southac Street near their home at the Hayden House.

These artworks, put to the practical purpose of raising money for Black soldiers, contradicted the ideals of Boston Brahmin abolitionists, such as the Gould Shaws.

[20]: 35  The portrait's paternalistic praise from Lowe and Child exemplified the divide between Boston's white abolitionists and the African American community.

[12]: 27  Through art like the 1884 Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, the Boston Brahmins rejected the possessive "Our Martyr" label given to him by Black artists like Bannister and Edmonia Lewis.

At the Lowell Institute, Bannister formed a lifelong friendship with painter John Nelson Arnold; both later became founding members of the Providence Art Club.

[4] An article in the New York Herald belittled both Bannister and his work: "The negro has an appreciation for art while being manifestly unable to produce it.

[12]: 53 After his death the Providence Art Club held a memorial exhibition in his name that focused on his artistic achievements,[4] without mentioning his contribution to abolitionism.

[...] He painted with profound feeling, not for pecuniary results, but to leave upon the canvas his impression of natural scenery, and to express his delight in the wondrous beauty of land and sea and sky.

In 1975, upon finding Bannister's marker damaged beyond repair, Ryder led a fundraising and design campaign to create a new monument, which stands today.

The disparity between Bannister's financial difficulties at the end of his life and the support shown by Providence's artists after his death led his friend John Nelson Arnold to say about the memorial: "In the labor incident to this work I was constantly reminded of the remark attributed to the mother of Robert Burns on being shown the splendid monument erected to the memory of her gifted son: 'He asked for bread and they gave him a stone.'"[16]: 118 [14]: 51 .

Much like George Inness,[10]: 178  his work reflected the composition, mood, and influences of French Barbizon painters Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, and Charles-François Daubigny.

"[29] For their mutual affinity with the Hudson River School, Bannister has been compared to his contemporary, the Ohio-based African American painter Robert S.

[12] Several of his compositions refer to classical, mathematical methods like the Golden Ratio or "Harmonic Grid", and make careful use of symmetry and asymmetry.

[12]: 53 Art historian Traci Lee Costa has argued that a "reductive" emphasis on Bannister's biography has taken attention away from scholarly analysis of his artwork.

[33]: 89  In the lecture The Artist and His Critics given to the Anne Eliza Club on April 15, 1886, and published afterward, Bannister spelled out his belief that making art is a highly spiritual practice—the pinnacle of human achievement.

In its nearly religious approach and focus on subjective representations of nature, Bannister's philosophy has been compared to both German Idealism and American Transcendentalism.

Despite the implied drama, Bannister used a cool color palette of blues and greens, with contrasting yellows that provide warmth against the darker, almost purple sky.

[31]: 46  The farms that Bannister painted were reminders of southern Rhode Island's history of chattel slavery, unlike French Barbizon scenes.

Unlike Bannister's idyllic pastorals, Hay Gatherers represents racial oppression and labor exploitation in Rhode Island, particularly South County where most of the state's plantations were.

[35] Bannister's Fort Dumpling, Jamestown, Rhode Island uses a similar triangular composition, whereby people relaxing are juxtaposed against but separated from sailboats in the background, a reminder of the "maritime legacy of slavery".

One of his first commissions, The Ship Outward Bound, might have been a veiled reference to the forced return of Anthony Burns to slavery and Virginia under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in 1854.

[11]: 70  Many of Bannister's works were commissioned landscapes and portraits that reinforced European ideas,[37] even though his art subtly dismantled racial stereotypes.

[38]: 29  Bannister's work reflected his desire to excel and contribute to racial uplift, while still needing to depend on white patronage to reach a wider audience.

[10]: 13,47 [11]: 69  Art historian Juanita Holland wrote of Bannister's dilemma: "This was a large part of the double bind that [Boston's] black artists faced: they needed to both address and represent an African American identity, while finding a way for their white viewers to look past race to a perception of the work in more universal terms.

[51] Because its disrepair and long disuse made the house unsuitable for residence, Brown renovated the property in 2015 and restored it to its original appearance.