Robert S. Duncanson genre landscape art
Final years
Throughout his career, Duncanson's works had always tended toward the pastoral, and his late works continued to show his love of landscape painting and resonated calmness and serenity.(p. 157) In the final years of his life, Duncanson developed dementia, possibly from lead poisoning. The dementia, and possibly schizophrenia, caused Duncanson to act unpredictably and erratically. He developed a belief in spiritualism and was convinced that he was possessed by a master painter. While Duncanson continued to create artwork, his behavior and declining physical health was alarming to his patrons. In 1872, Duncanson suffered a seizure while setting up an exhibition in Detroit, which eventually led to his death. Duncanson died on December 21, 1872; he was 51 years old. He was buried at the Woodland Cemetery in Monroe, Michigan.Legacy
Robert Seldon Duncanson was one of few African American landscape painters of the nineteenth century, and he achieved levels of success unknown to his contemporaries. By the 1860s, Duncanson was proclaimed to be the "greatest landscape painter in the West" by the American Press and London newspapers held him in equal regard to other British artists at the time. Richard Powell of American Visions says that Duncanson’s success is a “victory over society’s presumptions of what African-American artist should create.” Duncanson became nationally and internationally known for his landscape paintings modeled after the Hudson River School tradition, and is credited with developing the regional Ohio River Valley art form. Art historian Joseph D. Ketner claims that Duncanson's greatest contribution to art was "his distinctively picturesque-pastoral vision of landscape painting with allusions to popular romantic literature."Duncanson was largely forgotten from American art history until his work was rediscovered in the 1950s and 1960s. However, art historians maintained a false narrative about Duncanson for several decades. Beginning in the 1990s, art historians like Ketner made an effort to research Duncanson's life and work to develop an accurate portrayal of the artist.
The primary art historical controversy surrounding Duncanson is whether or not he represented racial issues in his art. Some art historians, like Ketner, theorize that there are veiled racial meanings in his paintings, while others, like Vendryes, consider his landscapes to be “race-free." Ketner asserts that Duncanson's artworks are representations of his cultural and racial identity. Vendryes argues that Duncanson did not explicitly represent contemporary racial issues in his work, and warns viewers from interpreting Duncanson and his art solely through the lens of his race, as it may limit the viewer's understanding of his work.
Since 1986, the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio has maintained an artist-in-residence program for contemporary African-American artists in honor of Duncanson.
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