"Robert Scott Duncanson"(1821-December 21,1872)

His father was Scottish and his mother was a mulatto.He was born in Seneca County,New York.As a young boy,Robert lived with his father in Canada,while his mother lived in Mount Pleasant,Ohio,a village fifteen miles north of Cincinnati.It was not until the summer of 1841 that he left Canada for Mount Pleasant.Upon his return to his mother's home,Robert said,he he came back to be an artist.Yearning to do more with paint than use it on houses,as he had been doing since 1838 with his house painting and decorating venture,he moved to Cincinnati,which seemed to be the right place.Around this time period,Cincinnati was "known as the "Athens of the West.Robert possessed the drive and determination to be an artist,he received no technical training.Determined to break into the exclusively White art community [...he ] taught himself by painting portraits and copying prints.Robert determination paid off with a long career that was active until death.During his lifetime Robert married twice and had three children,Reben,Milton,and Bertha.His life and career took him around the globe and back again.His artistic career had several phases which led him to travel both the country and the world for the pursuit of his art.Because he was not a formally trained artists,Robert honed his skills copying prints and painting portraits.In 1842 Robert had three portraits ("Fancy Portrait," "Infant Savior, a copy," and "miser")accepted to the last exhibition hosted by the Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge which had succeeded the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts.This served as his public debut to the art world this,success also came with a dose of reality.No one in Duncanson's family,not even his mother was allowed to attend the show because of their ethnicity.But keeping everyone's spirits up his mother said of his paintings,"I know what they look like [...] I know that they are there! That's the important thing.Taking a short break from portrait work,Robert collaborated with another artist,photographer,Coates.Together,on March 19,1844,Coates and Duncanson advertised a spectacle of "Chemical...Paintings...comprising four splendid views after the singular of Daguerre.It is though that Robert was the artistic mind behind the composition of the images white coates took care of the technical side.Robert was making progress as an artist personally and publicity,the lack of commissions for his work pushed him to move to Detroit in 1845.While in Detroit,Robert returned to his roots as a portrait painter and was well received by the local press.In 1846,the Detroit Daily Advertised praised Robert for skill and color usage,adding,"Mr.Duncanson deserves,and we trust will receive the patronage of all lovers of the fine arts.Portrait commissions in Detroit were forthcoming,but Robert was becoming interested in the genre painting tradition.He was first exposed to the tradition of genere painting through the work of fellow Cincinnati artist James H.Beard.Tired of Detroit and longing to expand his repertoire,Robert returned to Cincinnati in 1846.As he moved away from portrait work,the exploration journals of John Stevens and Frederick Catherwood,Incidents of Travel in the Yucatan intrigued Robert.The prints in these books prompted Robert to experiment with far off places and forgotten civilizations in his work.Back in Cincnnati and full of new inspiration,he received a career-boosting commission from Charles Avery was an abolitionist Methodist minister who commissioned the work Cliff Mine,Lake Superior in 1848.Not only did this work bolster Robert's career as a landscape painter,it also established him within a network of abolitionist patrons who would sustain most of his career.After the successful work done for Charles,Robert dove into the realm of landscape painting.Along with two other Cincinnati artists,Whittredge and Sonntag,Robert became inspired by the work of the Hudson River School artists and aspired to paint the American landscape.Together,the three artists set out on a series of sketching trips around the country to provide them with the necessary material and insiration to bring back to their Cincinnati studios.After sketching tours scattered about,Robert focused on the Ohio River Valley in the early 1850s.With his ambitions cast on landscape work,and feeling the influence of the Hudson River artists,he strived to transform his topographical works into something more like they had,including "more messages or literary associations.To do this he turned to Thomas Cole,copying many of his works dealing with paradise and drawing parallels between the imaginary lands painted and America.Robert success and progress throughout the years caught the eye of one of Cincinnati's wealthiest citizens.In 1851,Nicholas Longworth commissioned Robert to paint murals on the wall of his home,which was called Belmont.Robert created eight murals for the entry of the Belmont,each nine feet high and six and a half feet wide.The scale of the job was large,and Robert was still up and coming,Nicholas trusted him with the decoration of his home because he through him to be "one of our most promising painters The mural he created combined both his and Nicholas appreciation for landscape and interior design,Robert having painting houses years before.The murals were taxing and time consuming,the patonage of such a prominent Cincinnati citizen did much to further his career.Starting in 1854 and continuing "for about four years,"Robert worked in the photography studio of James Presley Ball retouching portraits and coloring photographic prints.In addition,he probably participated in the production of a 600-yard-long abolitionist panoramic painting that James unveeiled in 1855 entitled "Mammoth Pictorial Tour of the United States Comprising Views of the African Slave Trade.With the onset of the Civil War Robert exiled himself to Canada and the United Kingdom.In 1863 he took up residence in Montreal and would stay for two years.Here he was accepted enthusiastically and was inspirational to Canadian painters such as Otto Reinhold Jacobi.Canada loved Robert as one of their own and through of him as one of  "the earliest of our professional cultivators of the fine arts.The Canadian landscape greatly influened him,and is evident in many of his works.In 1865 he left Canada for the United Kingdom,particularly England and Scotland,to tour of his most accomplished works,The Land of the Lotus Eaters.In Europe,his work was well received and the prestigious London Art Journal declared him a master of landscape painting.In the winter of 1866-1867 Robert returned to Cincinnati.Inspired by his European travels he painted many scenes of the Scottish landscape.In the final years of his life,Robert created some of his greatest works.Throughout his career,his works had always tended toward the pastoral,and his late works continued his love of landscape painting and resonated calmness and serenity.Robert fell physically and psychologically ill and died in Detroit, Michigan.He was buried at the Woodland Cemetery in Monore,Michigan.