Robert S. Duncanson has works in the collection Detroit Institute of Arts
Uncle Tom and Little Eva, 1853
Robert Duncanson’s Uncle Tom and Little Eva, painted in 1853, is housed at the Detroit Institute of Arts. This work demonstrates Duncanson's growth in his early years of landscape painting. The painting depicts a scene from Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The painting is a copy of an engraving from the novel's illustrations. While Stowe's novel has many violent scenes that address the brutality of slavery, Duncanson chose to paint an innocuous scene from the book. He depicts two characters, a slave named Tom and the young daughter of a slave owner named Eva, set in an idyllic landscape. Tom and Eva are looking up at the sky—to the heavens and God—at the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. The scene is a critical moment in Beecher's novel related to the theme of salvation from slavery through spiritual love and sacrifice. In the 1850s, Duncanson gained popularity amongst abolitionist patrons. Reverend James Francis Conover, an outspoken abolitionist minister and news editor, recognized Duncanson's rise to prominence in the abolitionist art community and commissioned the work. Many abolitionists would commission works that explicitly portrayed the contemporary racial issues. While some art historians believe that Duncanson's works contained metaphors pertaining to issues of race, Uncle Tom and Little Eva is his only painting that explicitly addresses the racial issues of antebellum America by portraying an abolitionist story. As a free black artist active prior to the Civil War, Duncanson was in a unique position to make statements about racial issues, but he typically did not address these issues explicitly in his work. Although Duncanson’s son urged him to address contemporary racial concerns in his works, Duncanson wrote to his son, “I have no color on the brain; all I have on the brain is paint.” Some art historians, such as Joseph D. Ketner, believe that Duncanson intended to make an indictment of the institution of slavery by depicting this delicate yet profound scene from Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Other art historians, like Margaret Rose Vendryes, assert that Uncle Tom and Little Eva (1853) demonstrates Duncanson's desire to satisfy abolitionist patrons, and not necessarily his own views.Abbreviated list of artworks
Portrait of a Mother and Daughter, 1841 (Fulton County Arts Council, Hammonds House, Atlanta, Georgia)
Trial of Shakespeare, 1843 (Douglass Settlement House, Toledo, Ohio)
Roses Fancy Still Life, 1843 (National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)
Mt. Healthy, Ohio, 1844 (National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)
Drunkard's Plight, 1845 (Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan)
At the Foot of the Cross, 1846 (Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan)
Cliff Mine, Lake Superior, 1848 (F. Ward Paine, Jr., Portola Valley, California)
Mayan Ruins, Yucatan, 1848 (Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio)
The Belmont Murals, c. 1850–1852 (Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio)
Blue Hole, Flood Waters, Little Miami River, 1851 (Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio)
View of Cincinnati, Ohio From Covington, Kentucky, 1851 (Cincinnati Historical Society)
The Garden of Eden (after Cole), 1852 (High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia)
Dream of Arcadia (after Cole), 1852 (Private Collection, New York City)
Uncle Tom and Little Eva, 1853 (Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan)
Italianate Landscape, 1855 (California African American Museum, Los Angeles, California)
Robbing the Eagle's Nest, 1856 (National Museum of African American History and Culture)
Untitled (Landscape), late 1850s (Princeton University Art Museum)
Landscape with Rainbow, 1859 (National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)
Land of Lotus Eaters, 1861 (Collection of His Royal Majesty, the King of Sweden)
Faith, 1862 (National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, Ohio)
Vale of Kashmir, 1863 (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio)
Silver River, North Carolina, 1863 (The Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South Carolina)
Lake Beauport, 1864 (Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Québec, Canada)
Lake Saint-Charles, 1864 (Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Québec, Canada)
A Dream of Italy, 1865 (Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama)
Cottate Opposite Pass at Ben Lomond, 1866 (Museum of Art, North Carolina Central University, Durham, North Carolina, purchase)
Mountain Landscape with Cows and Sheep, 1866 (Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey, purchase)
Loch Long, Scotland, 1867 (National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)
The Caves, 1869 (Amon Carter Museum of American Art)
Dog's Head Scotland, 1870 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, Massachusetts)
holds works in the collection