Edmund L. Davison

Edmund Davison was born in Wapello, ID and is known as the "banker-painter". Davison and his family moved to Kansas at age of 10. He attended Phillips Andover Academy in Andover, ME, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He was a Wichita banker whose family owned the Commercial Bank on North Main Street. He knew John Noble (Wichita's earliest professional artist and internationally known), and was well acquainted with Berger Sandzen, C. A. Seward, Charles Capps, William Dickerson, B.J.O. Nordfeldt, Walter Ufer and Victor Higgins. Edmund and his wife, Faye, became very active in the Taos artistic community as well as Wichita's. He was a driving force in the foundation of the Wichita Art Association. In 1933 at 56, he closed the bank and devoted himself to his artistic career, living in Taos in the summers. His signature style combined bold expressionist colors with exaggerated perspectives. His work is in: The Wichita Art Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Detroit Art Institute; Art Institute of Chicago; and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. He passed away in 1944 in Wichita, KS.

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