John Bannon

John Bannon is a distinguished Washington-area painter and contemporary realist who has exhibited for more than 40 years in the United States and abroad. His vibrant portraits, still lifes, land and city scapes are housed in permanent museum collections as well as in the Hall of Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon, the Art Collection of the Supreme Court, in Washington, D.C.; the St. George Association in New York; the Pennsylvania Academy of Art; and many other public and private collections.

Born in 1933 in Baltimore, Bannon studied at the Maryland Institute of Art, beginning at age eight under the tutelage of Anne Didusch Schuler and others. Later, he acquired a BFA from the Maryland Insitute, an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the Henry Walters Prize. For 12 years, he was a protege and assistant to M. Jacques Maroger, former technical director of the Laboratory of the Louvre, who trained him in the techniques of the old masters. He assisted Maroger in teaching artistic anatomy at the Maryland Institute and collaborated on Maroger’s research of lost old masters’ painting formulas.

As a result of this association, in the 1960s, Bannon co-founded and exhibited in The Six Realists Gallery, in Baltimore, which received wide acclaim for its then-defiant stand for traditional art. The American Artist Magazine article (June 1998), "The Baltimore Realists," features Bannon’s work among other key representational artists.

Bannon has exhibited in more than 25 galleries and presented over 36 solo exhibits throughout his career. A member of the Oil Painters of America, he has won the Henry Walters Prize, as well as awards from the Maryland Institute of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy, the Easton Academy of Art, and others. Very recently, the Washington County Museum in Maryland acquired one of his works for their permanent collection.

McBride Gallery is pleased to present the work of this fine artist.