Robert Scott Duncanson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert Scott Duncanson (c. 1822 - December 21, 1872) was a African American Artist. He was born in Seneca County, New York in 1821. He is know for his murals in the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio as well as his other romantic landscapes. His landscape paintings are influenced by the Hudson River school. By 1850 Nicholas Longworth described Duncanson as "one of our most promising painters" and "a man of great industry and worth."

Duncanson's did much of his work in the Cincinnati and the Detroit, Michigan area. His portraits include that of James G. Birney, editor of the "Philanthropist", an abolitionist newspaper and of Lewis Cass, an abolitionist senator from Michigan. He received a grant from the Anti-Slavery League to study in Europe in 1853. Duncanson was known for his travels. Besides Cincinnati, he lived in and traveled to Detroit, Michigan, and depicted countless landscape scenes in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New England, and Scotland. As the American Civil War developed and ended, Duncanson's position as a free man of color became very much a part of his consciousness. Due to his light complexion, he was sometimes confused as being a white artist. Nevertheless, Duncanson's outstanding work caught the eye of critics and his fellow colleagues.

He died in 1872.