Nicholas Longworth

A staunch opponent of slavery, Nicholas Longworth once described Robert Duncanson as “a man of great industry and worth.” The millionaire expressed tremendous faith in the young African American artist by commissioning a series of landscape murals for the front hall of his home, Belmont. (They can still be viewed there today, at the Taft Museum of Art.) This would have been an honor for any painter, but for Duncanson, whose opportunities were limited, this gesture was extraordinary. Duncanson depicted his patron in the guise of the aristocratic landowners in the dramatic, monumental portraits of eighteenth-century England. Longworth stands before his expansive property. At the right are grapes, representing the sitter’s celebrated success in the cultivation of the Catawba variety on his terraced vineyards in Mount Adams; he made wine production a thriving regional industry. Surprising in this formal portrait is the note pinned to Longworth’s sleeve to remedy his forgetfulness. This personal detail seems a token of the painter’s fondness for his generous and eccentric benefactor.