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Romantic Landscape
Scottish Landscape
Robert S. Duncanson made several trips to Scotland, probably inspired by his father's Scottish heritage. He created romantic wilderness views that may have been influenced by the novels and poems of Sir Walter Scott. In this piece the warm colors and rich vegetation make a remote scene appear welcoming, and would have appealed to the sentimental tastes of his American patrons.
Robert Duncanson
Robert Scott Duncanson was perhaps the most accomplished African-American painter in the United States from 1850 to 1860. He was born in Seneca County, New York, in 1821 to an African-American mother and Scottish-Canadian father, who sent his son to Canadian schools during his youth. In 1841 Duncanson and his mother moved to Mt. Healthy, Ohio, near Cincinnati. Little else is known about Duncanson's early life except that his second wife Phoebe was biracial, and the couple's only child, a son Mittie, was born in Cincinnati.