Lot 333: Robert S. Duncanson (American/Ohio, 1821-1872),

Robert S. Duncanson (American/Ohio, 1821-1872), "Ohio River Valley Landscap$E", oil on canvas, unsigned, 28 1/2 in. x 52 in., framed. Provenance: Descended in the Williams family of Cincinnati, Ohio. Exhibition: Cincinnati Museum of Art, 1972 Publication: James Dallas Parks. Robert S. Duncanson: 19th c. Black Romantic Painter. Washington, DC.: Associated Publishers, 1908 Note : Robert Seldon Duncanson, who is often mistakenly called Robert Scott Duncanson, was a premier American landscape painter also known in Canada, England, and Scotland for his artistic talent. An African-American born into a family of house painters and carpenters, Duncanson had loftier goals and taught himself to paint still lifes and portraits, moving on to landscapes, for which he is best known, in the late 1840s. Duncanson created the majority of his Ohio River Valley landscape paintings in the 1850s, a period when he was also collaborating with the African-American photographer and abolitionist, James Presley Ball (1825-1904). These two artists exhibited their works together at Ball's Cincinnati studio and also mentored younger artists, many of whom had immigrated to Cincinnati in order to learn more about the art trade. Duncanson clearly worked within the regional landscape tradition pioneered a generation earlier by John James Audubon (1785-1851) and Joseph Mason (1802-1842), making excursions in local rivers for inspiration and to gather precise records of topography, flora and fauna. Duncanson's travels were by necessity confined to emancipated regions, specifically Ohio and Michigan. His works are typically monumental in scale and spiritual in tone, as seen in the canvas here. Duncanson also traveled and lived in Canada and England during the Civil War years, where his depiction of Tennyson's The Lotus Eaters was highly praised, even delighting the poet himself. By the late 1860s and early 1870s, Duncanson's fame had grown and he was known as ""the greatest landscape painter in the west"". A resurgence of interest in Duncanson's work has recently occurred; the National Gallery, Washington D.C. obtained their first Duncanson painting, an early still life scene from 1848 (acc. 2011.91.1) first on exhibition February 3, 2012 Reference: Moore, Lucinda. ""America's Forgotten Landscape Painter: Robert S. Duncanson,"" Smithsonian.com, October 19, 2011, Ketner, Joseph D. ""Struggles many and great: James P. Ball, Robert Duncanson, and other artists of color in antebellum Cincinnati,"" Magazine Antiques, December 4, 2011,