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Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828–1901) was a Canadian-born New England oil painter of the American Barbizon school. He and his wife Christiana were active in the African-American abolitionist community in Boston. Bannister won first prize for his art at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition and was a founding member of the Providence Art Club and the Rhode Island School of Design. His style and pastoral subjects were influenced by Jean-François Millet and the French Barbizon school. He also looked to the seaside for inspiration for his often experimental and Idealistic use of color and atmosphere. He worked as a photographer and portraitist before progressing to landscapes. His style fell out of favor later in his life; he and Christiana moved out of College Hill in Providence to Boston and then a smaller house in Providence. He was overlooked after his death in 1901, until the National Museum of African Art and others returned him to national attention in the 1960s and 1970s. (Full article...)

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In the news

Cale Makar

In ice hockey, the Colorado Avalanche defeat the Tampa Bay Lightning to win the Stanley Cup (Conn Smythe Trophy winner Cale Makar pictured).
At least twenty-one people are found dead in a nightclub in East London, South Africa.
A mass shooting during LGBT pride celebrations in Oslo, Norway, leaves two people dead and twenty-one others injured.
The United States Supreme Court determines that abortion is not a protected constitutional right, overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

On this day

June 29: Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (Western Christianity)

Wreckage of the St-Hilaire train disaster

1613 – The original Globe Theatre in London burned to the ground after a cannon employed for special effects misfired during a performance of Henry VIII and ignited the roof.
1864 – A passenger train fell through an open swing bridge into the Richelieu River near present-day Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, killing as many as 99 people and injuring 100 others in Canada's worst railway accident (wreckage pictured).
1967 – Actress Jayne Mansfield, her boyfriend Sam Brody, and their driver were killed in a car accident outside of New Orleans, while her children Miklós, Zoltán, and Mariska Hargitay escaped with only minor injuries.
1995 – Atlantis became the first U.S. Space Shuttle to dock with the Russian space station Mir as part of the Shuttle–Mir program.

Ludwig Beck (b. 1880)
Charles Lyon Chandler (d. 1962)
Jane Birdwood, Baroness Birdwood (d. 2000)

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Today's featured picture

The Church of St. Peter and St. Paul is a Roman Catholic church located in the neighbourhood of Antakalnis in Vilnius, Lithuania. Its interior has masterful compositions of some two thousand stucco figures by Pietro Perti and ornamentation by Giovanni Maria Galli da Bibiena, and is unique in Europe. The church is dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul, whose feast day is celebrated on 29 June. This photograph of the interior depicts the church's chancel with the main altar. The large central painting by Franciszek Smuglewicz depicts the emotional final parting of Peter and Paul. A life-sized sculpture of Jesus, known as Jesus of Antakalnis, is visible in a niche on the left of the image.

Photograph credit: David Iliff

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