Courage, dexterity, profound cultures, and powerful leaders; there are several stories in black history that have inspired and touched generations. There is an endless list of remarkable achievers who made their impact on the global world, from inventors to thinkers, civil rights campaigners to creatives. Among such figures, history texts credit Robert S. Duncanson as one of the best landscape painters of the mid-1800s.
Renowned for his extraordinary skills, he was one of the rare black artists who rubbed elbows with British and American landscape painters such as John Fredrick Kensett, Asher Brown Durand, and Thomas Cole. His painting style influenced the Hudson River Valley’s art tradition.
Whereas many landscape painters learned their craft by shadowing well-known artists, Robert remarkably developed his technique on his own, prompting historians to label him a self-taught painter who drew inspiration from the Hudson River Valley, particularly from William L. Sonntag, a renowned American landscape artist of the 1800s.
After his birth in Northern New York in 1817, Robert had to cope with the chains of racial prejudice that many African Americans faced, and he was constantly reminded that he was the offspring of a Scotch father and a mulatto mother.
His father’s choice to send him to Canada to complete his formal education was motivated by these preconceptions. But, he was unhappy in Canada and wished to relocate to the United States. Around 1840, he came to the United States and lived with his mother in Ohio. He eventually relocated to Cincinnati, where he worked as a freelance artist between Monroe and Detroit.
Growing up, his family made a career from carpentry and painting; for him, this was simply an occupational tradition passed down from generation to generation. Robert naturally chose painting and continued his family’s history, honing his technique by duplicating print and sketching portraits for clients interested in his work, which resulted in some of his early pieces being published in the Monroe Gazette.
Although having a good customer base in Monroe, Robert was not content to live the life of a common trader like his grandfather. His tremendous desire to succeed drove him to strive for a higher goal. But he was discreet in his criticism of slavery’s foundation, critics and art fans think he had a sensitive spot for making images that criticized oppression.
In 1848, he got his big break when he worked on the “Cliff Mine, Lake Superior,” a masterwork commissioned by anti-slavery crusader Charles Avery. Later in life, he formed a lasting alliance with civil rights campaigners and abolitionists who affected his ideology.
Several of his paintings were inspired by landscapes he saw while touring Europe and Canada, which encouraged him to create wild vistas from those regions. It was suspected that his excursions to Europe were supported by the Anti-Slavery League and the Freemen’s Aid Society, but in some of his 1853 letters, Robert stated that those trips were intended to bolster his confidence and compare his works to those done by the greatest. It allowed him to do some much-needed contemplation on his paintings and hone his skills.
When Robert died at the age of 55 in 1872, his paintings and name faded into obscurity, but they recently resurfaced at an exhibition commemorating the centennial of his death at the Cincinnati Art Museum, according to the Smithsonian magazine. This piqued the interest of art enthusiasts and critics who investigated his collections.