Robert Duncanson

Robert Duncanson
Adirondack Mountains, 1868, Oil on board
Gift of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art Alliance 1997.08

One of my favorite artists in our permanent collection is the supremely talented Robert Scott Duncanson, the very first African American artist who was able to earn his living through his painting. Born in 1822 in upstate New York, Duncanson apprenticed as a house painter and carpenter while teaching himself to paint by copying reproductions of Hudson River School landscapes. Both diligent and gifted, Duncanson progressed rapidly, advertising himself in the local paper as a “painter and glazier” while he was still in his teens.

Just after turning nineteen, Duncanson moved to Cincinnati where he rented a studio beside that of another young, aspiring artist, William Sonntag, who painted in a similar classical style. Both young men began exhibiting and selling their pictures almost immediately.

Duncanson’s work attracted the attention of Nicholas Longworth, the wealthy Cincinnati banker and horticulturalist who also became known as the “Father of the American Grape Culture.” Longworth began collecting Duncanson’s work and introducing him to the wealthiest families in the region. Most significantly, in 1850, Longworth commissioned Duncanson to paint eight murals in his palatial, Federal-style home which, later, became the Taft Museum.

Duncanson’s reputation continued to grow throughout the decade and he traveled all over America. During the Civil War, he went to England to paint landscapes and study classical motifs in European painting. By the time that he returned to the States to settle in Detroit, he had become recognized internationally.

Our Duncanson is one of his most compelling pictures—a romantic, timeless landscape with an idyllic stream in the foreground that carries our eyes deep into the picture to the rugged mountains in the hazy distance. We are indeed fortunate to have a work by this esteemed African American artist in the Museum.