Landscape with Rainbow

Copied Robert S. Duncanson, Landscape with Rainbow, 1859, oil on canvas, 30 x 52 1⁄4 in. (76.3 x 132.7 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Leonard and Paula Granoff, 1983.95.160
Free to use

Artwork Details

Title
Landscape with Rainbow
Artist
Date
1859
Location
Dimensions
30 x 52 1⁄4 in. (76.3 x 132.7 cm.)
Credit Line
Gift of Leonard and Paula Granoff
Mediums
Mediums Description
oil on canvas
Classifications
Subjects
  • Figure group — male and female
  • Occupation — farm — dairy
  • Animal — cattle
  • Landscape — phenomenon — rainbow
  • Animal — dog
  • Children
Object Number
1983.95.160
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1983.95.160

Artwork Description

Robert Seldon Duncanson was America’s best known African American painter in the years surrounding the Civil War. Based in Cincinnati, he was supported by abolitionists who bought his paintings and sponsored his trip to Europe to study from the Old Masters. In this pastoral landscape, a young couple strolls through fertile pastureland, toward a house at the end of a rainbow. The cattle head home toward the nearby cottage, reinforcing the sense that man lives in harmony with nature. Duncanson’s vision of rural America as Arcadia, a landscape akin to paradise, is a characteristic feature of his work, a late hope for peace before the onset of Civil War.

Related Posts

A painting of a landscape with a rainbow.
01/21/2021
Inauguration Highlights Rainbow Painting by African American Artist
Curator Eleanor Harvey shares the story of Robert S. Duncanson and his artwork
A photograph of Eleanor Harvey
Eleanor Jones Harvey
Senior Curator (19th-Century Art)