The largest collection of works by renowned Cincinnati painter Robert S. Duncanson ever assembled is coming to the Taft Museum of Art. Duncanson is considered the most well-known African American artist of the Civil War era and the first African American artist to achieve an international reputation.
"We're thrilled to be co-organizing the first major show on Robert S. Duncanson that has happened in the 21st century. There hasn't been one for over 30 years," says Ellen Roberts, the Sallie Robinson Wadsworth Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Taft Museum of Art. "Art history has evolved a lot in that time, and this will be the first time that 21st century art history has looked at the entirety of this important artist's career."
The exhibit, titled simply Robert S. Duncanson, will debut in Cincinnati with approximately 80 paintings and ephemera. It was created by co-curators from the Taft Museum and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
"Spurred by original scholarly research and featuring approximately eighty paintings spanning the artist’s prolific career, Robert S. Duncanson will explore for the first time the deep relevance of this artist’s work both to his contemporaries and to audiences today," the museum writes.
"We also have done groundbreaking primary source research into his biography and really confirm these details of his biography that have never been confirmed before," says Roberts. "These help us really understand his work in a way that has never been done before. ... It's been written about him at various points that his grandparents were enslaved, but we know now that his parents were enslaved, so he's just one generation away from slavery. I think that that was very present for him, that history, and so that's an important thing to keep in mind when looking at his pictures."
A catalogue will be co-published by the organizers and Yale University Press to go along with the exhibit, but it will also serve as a standalone book. It will become the publication of record for Duncanson's life and career. There are also plans for a traveling digital interactive and a children's book.
The exhibit is scheduled to run in Cincinnati from Oct. 30, 2027 to Feb. 6, 2028, before moving to Virginia from April 8-July 23, 2028.
Hidden murals
Duncanson is well-known locally for his eight murals that grace the walls of the historic Taft House. They were commissioned by Nicholas Longworth, whom the Cincinnati Art Museum says recognized and fostered Duncanson's talent. The murals, along with the house, were designated as National Historic Landmarks in 1976.
In October, the Taft completed restoration on two overdoor murals that were discovered in 1932, and hadn't been seen since. The partial still lifes of fruits and vegetables would have framed a likely ninth mural, which was removed in the 1800s to create a single doorway where there previously had been two, the museum says.
Curators say the partial nature of the two overdoor murals prompted the museum's first director to cover them, rather than preserve them. A recreation still life was commissioned at that time to frame the doorway.
"They decided, because these had been partially destroyed, to cover them up because it looked incomplete, obviously," Roberts says. "You could see why they decided to do that, but we decided that let's have more Duncanson, even if it is incomplete, and so that's why we decided to uncover them."
The recreation has been left in place and is framed by the two partials.
"What I love about seeing the three of them together is that you could see what a great artist Duncanson was because it's not as good, that central one," Roberts says.
The restoration required removing seven layers of paint and plaster over five months, according to conservator Michael Ruzga.
"It was very exciting to see each little fruit and vegetable emerge," he recalls. "I think the first one to come out was a peach, and then a Vidalia onion, and then even a purple turnip. One of the most fantastic things to come out was purple grapes. This may be the first time [in all the murals] that we see grapes, which may be a tribute to Nicholas Longworth, who is nationally recognized as a vintner," he says.
Duncanson's legacy
Though born in New York, he spent a lot of time in Cincinnati. He's known stylistically for his real and imagined landscapes inspired by the Hudson River Valley style and his international travels. Duncanson was born a free man in New York in 1821 and arrived in Cincinnati in 1840 at the age of 19. Rising pressures related to the Civil War led him to move his family to Montreal by 1863.
Duncanson began as many did, with portraiture in order to make money. He then moved to still lifes before finding his niche in painting pastoral landscapes.
Roberts says the Taft Museum is excited to present Duncanson's works in a way no other museum can.
"We can showcase for the first time his contemporaneous oil paintings, oil landscapes, next to his murals, and what happens when you do that is that you really see how important the murals are to his developing of a new landscape language. He has his own distinctive language, and I think that is one of the things that has not been acknowledged before. We'll be able to make these kind of connections for the first time visually for our viewers," she notes.
Duncanson achieved success at a time when Black people were enslaved. He even traveled to the South, where despite his status as a free man, laws in the South would have allowed someone to enslave him.
"This is a very dangerous thing for him to do at the time," Roberts points out. "Nevertheless, he went to the South and he painted the South. He also was supported by abolitionists in the South and also in the North, and also actually in Europe as well, so we're exploring those relationships and their impact on his career."
When President Joe Biden took office in 2021, First Lady Jill Biden selected Duncanson's Landscape with Rainbow, an oil painting on canvas from 1859, as the 59th Inaugural Painting.
Smithsonian American Art Museum Senior Curator Eleanor Jones Harvey described the piece thusly:
The topography of Duncanson’s Landscape with Rainbow evokes the Covington/Cincinnati region. When it was exhibited in 1859, a reviewer praised it as "one of the most beautiful pictures painted on this side of the [Allegheny] mountains." The bucolic vista over which the rainbow arches suggests a scene imbued with hope, providing a pictorial end of the rainbow towards which the couple walks. Duncanson painted this landscape on the eve of Civil War, a reminder of the power of landscape painting to convey America’s cultural aspirations. Duncanson presents this scene as a vision of future peace and prosperity regardless of race—an aspiration we all should embrace.
You can find Duncanson's works at the Taft Museum of Art and the Cincinnati Art Museum. The Cincinnati Museum Center also has some of his works in its collection. The Taft Museum honors his legacy with its annual Duncanson Artist-in-Residence program.
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