Robert S. Duncanson movement Hudson River school
Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821 – December 21, 1872) was a 19th-century American landscapist of European and African ancestry. Inspired by famous American landscape artists like Thomas Cole, Duncanson created renowned landscape paintings and is considered a second generation Hudson River School artist. Duncanson spent the majority of his career in Cincinnati, Ohio and helped develop the Ohio River Valley landscape tradition. As a free black man in antebellum America, Duncanson engaged the abolitionist community in America and England to support and promote his work. Duncanson is considered the first African-American artist to be internationally known. He operated in the cultural circles of Cincinnati, Detroit, Montreal, and London. The primary art historical debate centered on Duncanson concerns the role that contemporary racial issues played in his work. Some art historians, like Joseph D. Ketner, believe that Duncanson used racial metaphors in his artwork, while others, like Margaret Rose Vendryes, discourage viewers from approaching his art with a racialized perspective.Landscape painting
Landscape painting was an important genre from the 1830s to the 1900s. Artist Thomas Cole and other members of the Hudson River School used nature to convey ideas about America and its ideals. Duncanson was intrigued by landscape painting. As he moved away from portrait work, Duncanson became intrigued by travel prints, particularly the exploration journals of John Stevens and Frederick Catherwood, Incidents of Travel in the Yucatan. The prints in these books prompted Duncanson to experiment with depicting exotic places and forgotten civilizations in his work. Back in Cincinnati and full of new inspiration, he received a commission from Charles Avery, an abolitionist Methodist minister, in 1848. Not only did Cliff Mine, Lake Superior—the work Duncanson created for Avery—bolster his career as a landscape painter, it also established him within a network of abolitionist patrons who sustained most of his career.After completing Cliff Mine, Lake Superior (1848) for Charles Avery, Duncanson pursued landscape painting in earnest. Along with two other Cincinnati artists, T. Worthington Whittredge and William Louis Sonntag, Duncanson became inspired by the work of the Hudson River School artists and aspired to paint the American landscape. Together, the three artists set out on a series of sketching trips around the country to provide them with the necessary material and inspiration to bring back to their Cincinnati studios.(p. 28) After finishing the sketching tours, Duncanson focused on the Ohio River Valley in the early 1850s. With his ambitions cast on landscape work, operating on the style of the Hudson River School, Duncanson strived to transform his topographical works into romantic landscapes with literary allusions In order to accomplish this, he turned to Thomas Cole, copying many of his works dealing with paradise and drawing parallels between the imaginary lands painted and America. Around 1850, Duncanson was given his largest commission of his career by Nicholas Longworth to paint 8 landscape panels in Longworth's Cincinnati estate Belmont.The panels have been called the regarded as "among the most accomplished domestic mural paintings of pre-Civil War America." In 1851, Duncanson's created one more well-known landscape paintings from this time period, Blue Hole, Flood Waters, Miami River. In 1853, Duncanson embarked on the traditional "grand tour" of Europe, completed by many contemporary artists, which exposed him to the art world and provided inspiration for many of his future landscape works. In 1859, Duncanson finished his painting Landscape with Rainbow which, when exhibited, was "hailed as 'one of the most beautiful pictures painted on this side of the [Allegheny] mountains.’" This painting was prominently shown during Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, 2021 when he and his wife entered the U.S. Capitol.In 1861, Duncanson created his "greatest work": Land of the Lotus Eaters. This painting was Duncanson's most widely acclaimed work. Moreover, Duncanson intended for the work to receive this tremendous acclaim. He planned to exhibit the work on a European tour before he began painting it.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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