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.
- Title
-
Landscape with Rainbow
- Artist
- Date
- 1859
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 30 x 52 1⁄4 in. (76.3 x 132.7 cm.)
- Credit Line
-
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of Leonard and Paula Granoff
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- oil on canvas
- Classifications
- Keywords
-
- Occupation – farm – dairy
- Animal – cattle
- Animal – dog
- Figure group – male and female
- Children
- Landscape – phenomenon – rainbow
- Object Number
-
1983.95.160
- Palette
- Linked Open Data
- Linked Open Data URI
