Robert Scott Duncanson: first internationally celebrated African-American artist

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The Life and Work of Robert Scott Duncanson

Abstract This paper describes the life and work of Robert Scott Duncanson, the first internationally celebrated African-American artist. Duncanson grew up a free black in New York, learning in the trade of his grandfather and father. He eventually moved to Cincinnati to take up painting in earnest. He developed a skill for landscape painting after the Hudson River School, and earned the patronage of several wealthy abolitionists, who supported his career and his travels. Duncanson achieved renown with his Land of the Lotus Eaters, which was purchased by the King of Norway during an exhibit in the UK. Duncanson died following a seizure in Detroit in 1872.

The Life and Work of Robert Scott Duncanson Introduction Robert Scott Duncanson was born in 1821 in Fayette, New York. He died at the age of 51 on December 21, 1872 in Detroit, Michigan. In his lifetime, he achieved renown as a landscape painter of the Hudson River School, the mid-19th century American art movement practiced by landscape artists who drew their inspiration from the Romantic Era but whose direct influence stemmed from the English émigré Thomas Cole (Avery, 2004). Born during an age of slavery, but dying in the era of emancipation, Duncanson himself an African-American worked for several abolitionist patrons to convey in landscape paintings ideas that promoted the abolitionist cause (Moore, 2011). Throughout his life Duncanson established himself as a world-class painter, winning the praises of artists, such as the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whose home Duncanson had the privilege of visiting in the 1860s. Indeed, Duncanson’s Land of the Lots Eaters was based on one of Tennyson’s own poems—which indicates that the appreciation among the two artists was mutual. Thus, Duncanson brushed shoulders with the upper-class, the well-to-do, and those who supported the abolitionist cause. Today, he is less remembered than other artists, but his significance in American art history remains, as the first African-American artist to obtain international fame (Patton, 1998). This paper will describe the life and work of Robert Scott Duncanson. Growing Up and Becoming an Artist Robert Duncanson’s father was a free black tradesman. His grandfather, Charles Duncanson had been emancipated in the 18th century and moved with his family from Virginia to the north. As the illegitimate son of his owner, Charles Duncanson was permitted to learn a trade (painting and carpentry) before being freed (Ketner, 1993). Charles moved with his family to New York, where Robert would later be born. Robert grew up learning painting and carpentry, which were the family trades that Charles passed down to his sons, one of whom was John Dean, Robert’s own father (Cincinnati Museum Center, 2017). Robert worked as an apprentice until 1938, when he formed his own painting business with a partner. The partnership did not last long, and Robert decided to pursue a solo career—as an artist. He left New York and settled in Cincinnati, where he began to train by doing sketches, copies and portraits. In Cincinnati, there was a considerable free black population, and Robert lived with a family that had also descended from Virginia slaves. There was also a strong arts community, and the city had a reputation for being the Athens of the West (Taft Museum, 1995). Having received no formal education in landscape, portrait or genre painting, Duncanson set about teaching himself. Like many African-American artists of the time, Duncanson had been obliged to travel as an itinerant painter—a painter who moves from place to place seeking patrons and commissions. Duncanson thus traveled throughout the states of Ohio and Michigan seeking patrons to support his work. In 1841, he painted Portrait of a Mother and Daughter—first earliest dated entry into professional painting. The following year saw three of his pieces publicly exhibited in a show held by the Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge in Cincinnati (Ketner, 1993). Because of his and his family’s race, however, they could not attend the showing in person. Duncanson’s mother accepted this in stride and asserted, “I know they are there! That’s the important thing!”—and indeed it was, as Duncanson’s name as a competent painter began to grow from this point on (Bearden & Henderson, 1993, p. 20). Duncanson’s craft developed throughout the 1840s, as he worked on portraits, historical scenes and various genres. With landscape painting becoming a particularly popular genre during mid-century, Duncanson turned to this more and more. He began to follow in the footsteps of Thomas Cole, who viewed nature and the landscape painting as a way to communicate grand ideas about the world. Duncanson threw himself into this style of painting in Cincinnati. View of Cincinnati (1851) is one of Duncanson’s early oil on canvas works from this period and illustrates his penchant for the landscape paintings that would catapult his career. It is rich, lush with greenery, and representative of the significant talents that Duncanson possessed. It was also a work that came on the heels of a very important commission from the abolitionist minister Charles Avery in 1848. When Avery commissioned Duncanson to paint Cliff Mine, Lake Superior, a landscape painting that was meant to have symbolic merits with an underlying abolitionist meaning, Duncanson’s career finally began to take shape (Cincinnati Museum Center, 2017). However, Duncanson never overtly introduced themes of race or racism into his landscape paintings. Still, his penchant for realism allowed these themes to organically emerge on their own. For instance, in View of Cincinnati, there is a clear contrast between the two sides of the fence of slavery: on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River there are slaves hard at work under the guise of their white slave owners. On the Ohio side of the Ohio River, there is freedom and prosperity. The Career Takes Shape Duncanson now began working with T. W. Whittredge and W. L. Sonntag—other local artist in Cincinnati. The three of them went on sketching tours to gather ideas for landscape paintings that they could flesh out back home. Duncanson imbued the Ohio River Valley paintings of his at this time with the same kind of romanticism that imbued the Hudson River School’s paintings. Duncanson practiced by copying and re-copying the works of Cole. He continued to receive commissions from the network of abolitionist patrons to whom Avery introduced him, and with steady work coming in and his renown building, Duncanson could afford to set off on a European tour. Thanks to the support of his abolitionist patrons, Duncanson was never without work. They paid for his landscape paintings as well as for his travels so that he could acquire new ideas and connect with other artists in the art community. Because Duncanson was an African-American artist, he was viewed by abolitionists as a prime example of why abolition was so important: clearly, blacks were as skilled as whites and deserved to be treated equally. In one sense, therefore, Duncanson became a poster child for the abolitionists, as they could laud his work and point to his successes as proof that their own position toward slavery was the just one. Yet, as Patton (1998) points out, Duncanson’s successes were also partly attributed to the fact that his father was white and that Robert was of a much lighter complexion that full-blooded blacks. Indeed, Duncanson had many Caucasian characteristics—and these undoubtedly helped him to gain traction into the established art world as well. No other black, for instance, had been able to obtain the level of international fame that Duncanson did by the 1860s. So in this sense, Duncanson made later successes for African-Americans possible by breaking down some of the barriers that existed—thanks to his work for the abolitionists and to his “whiteness” which reduced the amount of stigma still associated with the black race. Farrington (2012) has also noted that racial identity was particularly important for artists and patrons at this time and the city of Cincinnati, being right on the border between North and South, served as a place where free blacks could gather and associate freely with abolitionists—and where lighter-skinned blacks like Duncanson and Josh Johnston were afforded more opportunities to advance socially and professionally on account of their fairer skin. One of Duncanson’s important and wealthy abolitionist patrons was Nicholas Longworth, who hired Duncanson to paint “eight monumental landscape murals on the panels inside the main hall of his Belmont mansion, now known as Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati” (Moore, 2011). As Ketner (1993) stated, these murals by Duncanson were “the most ambitious and accomplished domestic mural paintings in antebellum America” (p. 134). Longworth’s patronage brought Duncanson even more fame and more work, and allowed him to further develop his career by meeting new artists and learning more and more of the skills needed to develop his trade still further. Civil War Years The Civil War was a traumatic experience for the nation as a whole. Abraham Lincoln had just been elected president in a shock for the country, and the southern states refused to adhere to the federal government’s plans for the expansion of the nation to the west. When war broke out in April of 1861, Duncanson sought out a safer climate in which to pursue his craft. Between Canada and the UK, Duncanson passed the years of the war, painting, collecting landscape ideas, and developing professional relationships that could facilitate his career at the international level. In Montreal, Duncanson was greeted warmly. He settled down there in 1863 and before he left two years later, he had acquired the reputation of being one of Canada’s first “professional cultivators of the fine arts” (Taft Museum, 1995). Indeed, Duncanson helped to establish the landscape painting movement in Canada, inspiring various artists there, from Otto Jacobi to C. J. Way and Allan Edson. Following his stay in Canada, Duncanson traveled to England, where he visited the poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson and showed off his Lotus Eaters painting—to which Tennyson responded, “Your landscape is a land in which one loves to wander and linger” (Moore, 2011). The Land of the Lotus Eaters was a painting that also carried a significant message: “In Duncanson’s tropical landscape, white soldiers are resting comfortably on the banks of a river, while being served by dark-skinned Americans” (Moore, 2011). The painting represents the reality that America and the South in particular “had grown dependent on slave labor to support its standard of living” (Moore, 2011). Having painted the landscape before the outbreak of war, Duncanson’s work carried with it a tenor of foreboding. Regardless, Duncanson considered it his greatest painting and many in the international community admired it as such. The painting was exhibited in London to significant praise. Reviewers heralded it, writing, “It is a grand conception, and a composition of infinite skill. This painting may rank among the most delicious that Art has given us, but it is wrought with the skill of a master” (Moore, 2011). As a result of his reception in London, Duncanson was soon meeting duchesses and marquises, royals and other famed personages. The King of Sweden went so far as to purchase Duncansonn’s Lotus Eaters (Moore, 2011). Duncanson was truly an international celebrity at this point. He traveled north from London to Scotland and stayed in a castle where he sketched landscapes while visiting the Duchess of Argyll. After a year of enjoying his international success as a landscape painter, Duncanson returned home. The war was over—the year was 1866, and America was entering into a supposed rebirth, a new era of Reconstruction. The End of an Era and an Artist Just as Duncanson was enjoying the very height of his newfound fame, his star descended. If America was entering into a new period in its life, Duncanson was suddenly and unexpectedly coming to the end of his. He developed a mental disorder described at the time as dementia: “Prone to sudden outbursts, erratic behavior and delusions, by 1870, he imagined that he was possessed by the spirit of a deceased artist. Scholars suggest that the brooding mood and turbulent waters of seascapes, such as Sunset on the New England Coast and A Storm off the Irish Coast, reflected his disturbed mental state” (Moore, 2011). Indeed, Sunset on the New England Coast is a startling landscape painting that appears to be very foreboding, considering the onset of Duncanson’s mental disease.