Robert S. Duncanson

Robert Seldon Duncanson was born in 1821 in Fayette, New York. Charles Duncanson, Robert's grandfather, was an emancipated enslaved man from Virginia. He moved north to Fayette before 1790. Charles's son, John Dean, and his wife, Lucy, raised a family of seven children, including Robert. Duncanson grew up in Monroe, Michigan, where he learned the family trade of house and ornamental painting, as well as carpentry.  Working in Monroe from 1838 to 1839 as a painter and glazier, he dreamed of becoming an artist. He left Michigan around 1840 for Cincinnati, Ohio, to pursue a career as an artist. Moving to Cincinnati offered new opportunities for Duncanson. Located on the Ohio River, Cincinnati was on the border with the Southern states at a time in American history when the abolition of slavery was an important issue. Upon his arrival, Duncanson settled in Mount Healthy, an area northwest of the city known for its abolitionist sympathies and home to a tightly knit group of African Americans. Although he was aware of the struggles he would face as an African American working in a city so close to the south, he soon received several commissions from Cincinnati citizens. Duncanson’s early career in Cincinnati was that of an itinerant artist. Throughout the 1840s, he traveled between Cincinnati and Detroit painting portraits, historical and fancy pictures. As an African American artist, he found it difficult to secure commissions and was at times nearly penniless. His career received a major boost in 1848 when he was commissioned by abolitionist Charles Avery to paint the landscape, "Cliff Mine, Lake Superior". The association led to lifelong relationships with those who wanted to support black artists. 

Also among those interested in Duncanson was Nicholas Longworth (1783–1863), the city’s greatest patron of the arts. In 1850, Longworth commissioned Duncanson to create a series of eight landscape murals for his home, Belmont (now the Taft Museum of Art). While working on this commission, the young artist gained access to Longworth’s art collection and broadened his interest in landscape painting. Longworth was so impressed with Duncanson, referring to him as "one of our most promising painters" and "a man of great industry and worth," that he sponsored his first trip to Europe. Between April 1853 and June 1854, Duncanson made the “Grand Tour” of Europe, visiting London, Paris, and Florence. He was the first African American to have such an opportunity. After returning to Cincinnati, Duncanson continued to paint landscapes in addition to portraits of local citizens, including Longworth. The Hudson River School painters, as well as Worthington Whittredge (1820–1910) and William L. Sonntag (1822–1900) with whom he went on painting excursions in the Ohio Valley, influenced his style of landscape painting. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Duncanson traveled through the northern United States and Canada, hoping to escape the turmoil of the fighting and anti-African American fervor. In the summer of 1865, Duncanson returned to Europe and traveled to Scotland where he earned international acclaim from the British press.

By the late 1860s, Duncanson struggled with mental illness and believed that the spirit of a master artist possessed him. His delusions may have been brought on by his continuous exposure to lead-based paint, first as a housepainter and later as an artist. Having spent his last years in Michigan, Duncanson died in a Detroit sanatorium on December 21, 1872. 

A popular spot for the city’s painters from the 1830s forward was a pool of water on the Little Miami River, known as Blue Hole. This picturesque area is located in what is now John Bryan State Park, near Yellow Springs, Ohio.  In the painting, the waters of Blue Hole are calm and serene. The mirror like pool reflects the trees in the background as well as the clouds in the sky. At first glance, this scene appears untouched by humans, until one observes three anglers in the central foreground. In this area of the painting, Duncanson also included plants, flowers, and rocks, as well as a few dead tree limbs. Duncanson used a palette of cool colors---silvery blues and greens--to depict the water and especially the treetops in the background. The tranquility in "Blue Hole" may not be coincidental. Perhaps Duncanson was hinting at his belief in a world free from racial hatred, where nature’s beauty helps man forget the troubles of everyday life.

As a free African American living in Cincinnati only miles from the Confederate border, Duncanson surely felt the mounting tension of the Civil War by 1862. In the fall, he left town on a sketching trip to the Upper Mississippi through Minnesota, perhaps for this reason. While there he captured this view of the falls on the Minnesota River near Mankato. The Dakota word "Minneopa", meaning “water falling twice,” refers to the twin waterfalls. A Native American in the foreground is perhaps a reference to Longfellow’s "Hiawatha", a popular poem set in the area. On the surface, the poem is about the vanishing Native American race, but it was also embraced by abolitionists as a symbol of the plight of African Americans, as both races suffered under the control of the European American.

During his 1865 trip to the United Kingdom, Duncanson had the opportunity to spend considerable time in Scotland. The scenery of the Scottish Highlands had a profound effect on the artist, reaffirming his love for English Romantic writers like Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832).  For "Pass at Leny", the inspiration came from a passage in "A Legend of Montrose" from the "Waverly Novels" of 1819 by Scott. It reads: “The beautiful pass of Leny…The broken path which they pursued with some difficulty, was in some places shaded by ancient birches and oak trees, and in others overhung by fragments of huge rock…a scene so romantic would have been judged to possess the highest charms for the traveller.”