Landscape in the Smoky Mountains, Tennessee

Robert S. Duncanson was one of the most prominent members of Cincinnati’s thriving artistic community in the mid-nineteenth century. A leading economic and cultural center on the border between the North and South, Cincinnati was a stronghold of abolitionism. Despite rampant racial discrimination in Ohio, Duncanson’s career flourished. Between 1850 and 1852, the artist undertook several sketching trips, not only traveling up the Ohio River through Pennsylvania, New York, and Michigan, but also going south to Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Duncanson created compositions like this one by combining sketches from his travels.