biography of Robert Scott DUNCANSON (1821-1872)

Birth place: New York State

Death place: Detroit, MI

Addresses: Primarily in Cincinnati, Ohio

Profession: Portrait, landscape, genre, still-life painter

Exhibited: Cincinnati, 1842; Michigan State Fair, 1849; AAU, 1850; Gallery of FA, Detroit, 1852; Western Art Assoc., 1871; Detroit Art Assoc., 1875-1876

Member: Cincinnati Artists Soc.

Work: Taft Museum (Cincinnati); Detroit Institute of Art; Ohio Military Inst.; Ohio Mechanics Inst.; Wilberforce Univ.; Balmoral Castle, Scotland; Amherst, MA, Coll.; Butler Inst.; Cincinnati Hist. Soc.; NMAA; CGA; BMFA; Cincinnati Art Mus.; many priv. colls. Awards: Freeman's Aid Soc. Scholarship; Anti-Slave League Award.

Comments: Born of a Black mother and a Scotch-Canadian father. After spending his childhood in Canada, Duncanson joined his mother at Mount Healthy, near Cincinnati, in 1841. The following year he exhibited for the first time in Cincinnati. His first important commission was for a series of mural landscapes for Belmont," the home of Nicholas Longworth (now the Taft Museum). In 1850, the Western Art Union distributed and sold his work. He made two visits to Europe, to Italy in 1853 (with William Sonntag) and to Britain 1863-66, and possibly a third, to Scotland, in 1870-71. He died after a mental and physical breakdown.

Sources: G&W; Dwight, "Robert S. Duncanson"; Porter, "Robert S. Duncanson, Midwestern Romantic-Realist" (with checklist and 26 repros.). See also Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, 33 (1950-51), 21-25; 8 Census (1860), Ohio XXV, 255; Cist, Cincinnati in 1851; Cincinnati CD 1853, 1856-60; Webster, "Junius R. Sloan," 107; Swan, BA; Cowdrey, AA & AAU; Park, Mural Painters in America; Locke, The Negro in Art. More recently, see Baigell, Dictionary; Campbell, New Hampshire Scenery, 50; Gibson, Artists of Early Michigan, 92; Guy McElroy, Robert S. Duncanson (1821-1872): A Study of the Artist's Life and Work, in Cincinnati Art Museum, Robert S. Duncanson, A Centennial Exhibition (Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum, 1972); Robert Vitz, The Queen and the Arts: Cultural Life in Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati (Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 1989); Cederholm, Afro-American Artists. "