Walter Darby Bannard was an American abstract painter.
Bannard was born in New Haven, Connecticut and attended Phillips Exeter Academy (class of 1952) and Princeton University, where he struck up a friendship and working relationship with Frank Stella, who was also interested in minimalist abstraction. He was associated with Modernism, Lyrical Abstraction, Minimalism, Formalism (art), Post-painterly Abstraction and Color Field painting.