Robert S. Duncanson

Joseph D. Ketner II:

Robert Duncanson’s life unfolded in a scenario typical for a mixed-race "free colored person" in antebellum America. His parents John Dean and Lucy, along with his grandparents, moved north to Fayette, New York from their native Virginia around the turn of the nineteenth century. The United States Census lists them as "mulatto" "free colored persons," who worked as carpenters. The Duncanson clan probably benefited from the first mass emancipation of slaves after the American Revolution. The majority of those liberated came from the Upper South (states such as Virginia) and were mixed-race slaves, who as offspring of the master often held privileged positions in the slave hierarchy, were taught skills, and were educated. Many of these former slaves moved north, seeking opportunity in northern states that had abolished slavery by 1803, in the first massive migration of African Americans to the North. The Duncansons followed this migratory pattern and, in fact, moved into the Central New York Military Tract, where the Federal government located and granted land to Revolutionary War veterans, implying that Duncanson’s grandfather, Charles (c. 1744–1828), may have earned his freedom in exchange for military service.

Joseph D. Ketner II:

The Duncanson family participated in the growth of the black middle class at the turn of the nineteenth century, a time when African-American artisans predominated in the trades in the United States. Robert Duncanson was mentored in the family trades of carpentry and house painting. In Monroe, Michigan, at the age of sixteen, Robert reached the apprentice stage of his training and his father hired him out to a local house painter. From this craftsman Robert would have learned painting, glazing, mixing colors, preparing surfaces, and applying paint. Sufficiently trained in these skills, Duncanson went into business with a partner in 1838. Duncanson was in business for only about a year before the partnership dissolved, and he resolved to become an artist and to break into the art community, which was almost exclusively Caucasian. An abolitionist journal of the period reported that a friend, perhaps his former partner John Gamblin, encouraged him to paint a portrait, provided the supplies, and thus stimulated Duncanson’s artistic ambitions. With encouragement, he moved in 1841 to Cincinnati.

Joseph D. Ketner II:

Since the introduction of the steamboat in the 1820s, Cincinnati grew from a frontier outpost to a booming economic center that boasted a distinctive regional culture. In the 1840s and 1850s Cincinnati experienced a tremendous economic boom. Art thrives with patronage and with the newfound prosperity Cincinnati was able to offer education, exhibitions, and patrons. Situated at the nexus of the north-south and east-west axes, Cincinnati was also a stronghold of both the pro-slavery and the anti-slavery movements. Although slavery was illegal, the city also had close social and economic ties to the southern states. The economic prosperity of the city attracted a large number of free people of color and over the decade became one of the larger concentrations of that population in the US. Despite the pervasive existence of racial discrimination, the city’s complex, and at times paradoxical, social and cultural dynamics contributed to the development of a thriving African-American community.

At the time Duncanson moved to Cincinnati in 1841, the city experienced a series of pro-slavery riots, among the most severe in the nation. Living in neighboring Mt. Healthy with family friends, Duncanson observed the active Cincinnati cultural community and taught himself to paint by copying prints, sketching from nature, and painting portraits. Like many artists of this period, economic pressure forced him to become itinerant, traveling across Ohio and Michigan seeking portrait commissions. It was extremely difficult for an African American in an era of “Black Laws” to secure commissions. However, the violence of the riots galvanized the anti-slavery activists, who forced the state to repeal its “Black Laws” in 1849, providing free blacks legal protection similar to that accorded to whites, and offering educational opportunities with state-sponsored education. Allowed to flourish, the result was the growth of a black middle class—overwhelmingly mixed-race—formed of clerks, shopkeepers, barbers, businessmen, and artists.

Joseph D. Ketner II:

Duncanson participated in the national fascination with landscape painting and used the North American landscape as a metaphor to express America’s cultural identity. Duncanson followed the model of landscape painting established by the east coast painters Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand. The catalytic moment for Duncanson was in 1847 when Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life came to Cincinnati. The purchase and subsequent public exhibition of these paintings in Cincinnati at the Western Art Union in 1848 exerted a profound impact on the developing art community of Cincinnati. Prior to the appearance of The Voyage of Life Duncanson had been an itinerant painter producing portraits, still life, basically whatever was commissioned or would sell. The visceral experience of seeing Cole’s paintings in the flesh—the rich color, exquisite detail, and moralizing anecdote of Cole’s didactic series—transformed his artistic practice. Upon seeing The Voyage of Life he immediately changed his style and began to concentrate on painting landscapes, clearly emulating Cole’s style.

Thomas Cole (American, 1801–1848), The Voyage of Life: Childhood, 1842, oil on canvas, 52 7/8 x 76 7/8 inches. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Alisa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1971.16.1 (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution).

In the early 1850s Duncanson made remarkable artistic progress from an itinerant painter to being regarded by Cincinnati’s civic leaders as “one of our most promising painters.” The success of these ambitious commissions from abolitionist sympathizers earned the artist sponsorship to take the traditional artistic pilgrimage across Europe. After completing the monumental Belmont Murals for Nicholas Longworth’s grand home “Belmont” (now The Taft Museum of Art), he embarked on his “grand tour” of Europe with friend and colleague William Sonntag. [Museum Note: An example of Sonntag’s work in The Dayton Art Institute’s collection is Dream of Italy, in the same gallery as Mayan Ruins, Yucatan, Gallery 207.]

William Louis Sonntag (American, 1822–1900), Dream of Italy, 1859, oil on canvas. Museum purchase with funds provided by Mrs. R. Warren White, the Daniel Blau Endowment Fund, the William Henry Zweisher Educational Trust Fund of The Dayton Art Institute, and Donald G. Schweller in honor of Mary Schweller by exchange, 2004.29.