American Art Collaborative

A group of Cincinnati abolitionists recognized the talent of African American artist Robert Duncanson, bought his works, and sponsored his trips to Europe. These trips honed the artist's technique and gave him a chance to compare his work with the masters. His pastoral landscapes appear traditional, but may quietly evoke the most divisive issue America faced at mid-century. Tiny figures stand on the far banks of the river, and beyond them lies a dreamlike landscape of mountains and farms. This might represent the promised land of freedom that escaped slaves in the 1850s hoped to reach by swimming across the Ohio River to the free states of the North.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006