Robert Seldon Duncanson
Robert Seldon Duncanson
1821 - 1872
African American painter. A self-taught artist and a landscape painter of the HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL tradition, Duncanson was the first African American artist to receive international recognition (see fig.). Born into a family of painters and handymen, Duncanson first worked as a house-painter and glazier in Monroe, MI. By 1841 he was in Cincinnati, OH, where he learnt to paint by executing portraits and copying prints. Throughout the 1840s he travelled as an itinerant artist between Cincinnati, Monroe and Detroit. His early work was crude and primitive, betraying his lack of training.
Around 1850 Duncanson was awarded his largest commission, the landscape murals for the Cincinnati estate Belmont, formerly the Martin Baum House (now Cincinnati, OH, Taft Mus.). These consist of eight landscape panels (2.77×2.21 m each) in trompe-l’oeil French Rococo frames on the walls of the entrance halls. The painted decorations were inspired by French and English wallpapers. The panels are among the most accomplished domestic mural paintings of pre-Civil War America.
During the 1850s, influenced by the work of Thomas Cole and William Lewis Sonntag, Duncanson began to specialize in landscape painting (see fig.). His works were either observations of scenery or imaginary compositions that often illustrated literary subjects. A tour of Europe, made in the summer of 1853 with Sonntag, inspired a series of romantic European scenes in the late 1850s. He also produced realistic views of American scenery, such as Landscape with Rainbow (1859; Washington, DC, N. Mus. Amer. A.). When it was exhibited, this painting was hailed as ‘one of the most beautiful pictures painted on this side of the [Allegheny] mountains’ (Cincinnati Enquirer, 17 Jan 1860). This success prompted Duncanson to create ‘a masterwork’—the largest easel painting of his career, The Land of the Lotus Eaters (1.34×2.25 m, 1861; Stockholm, Kun. Husgerådskam.). The subject was suggested by Alfred Tennyson’s poem of that title and was also influenced by Frederic Edwin Church’s Heart of the Andes (1859; New York, Met.). Duncanson’s vast tropical landscape earned him the status of ‘the best landscape painter in the West’ (Cincinnati Gazette, 30 May 1862).
In 1863 Duncanson left for Europe again, to exhibit his work. However, the turmoil of the Civil War forced him to travel first to Montreal, where he quickly became recognized as the city’s foremost artist. The stark realism of his Canadian paintings, including Owl’s Head Mountain (1864; Ottawa, N.G.), stimulated a younger generation of artists to establish the first Canadian school of landscape painting. Duncanson’s successful entry as a Canadian in the 1865 International Exposition in Dublin took him to Scotland and England in the summer of that year. In England he was patronized by members of the aristocracy and received critical accolades.
On his return to Cincinnati in 1866, Duncanson began ‘working up’ his European sketches into finished paintings. Among these was Ellen’s Isle, Loch Katrine (1870; Detroit, MI, Inst. A.), inspired by Sir Walter Scott’s poem ‘The Lady of the Lake’. The contrast of serene light and the rugged Scottish Highlands makes this Duncanson’s most sensitive synthesis of wilderness scenery, pastoral sentiment and literary subject-matter. However at this time he began to experience a dementia marked by schizophrenic behaviour, including the belief that he was possessed by spirits. The paintings of this period reflect his mental condition. While many of his landscapes have the serenity of Ellen’s Isle, he also painted stormy seascapes, such as Sunset on the New England Coast (1871; Cincinnati, OH, A. Mus.). He was incarcerated at the Michigan State Retreat in 1872 after experiencing a nervous breakdown while hanging an exhibition of his work in Detroit. He died three months later. [Joseph D. Ketner II. "Duncanson, Robert S.." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T024044.]
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