Landscape with Rainbow

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

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Artwork Details

Title: Landscape with Rainbow
Artist: Robert S. Duncanson
Date: 1859
Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum
/
2nd Floor
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East Wing
Dimensions: 30 x 52 ¹⁄₄ in. (76.3 x 132.7 cm.)
Credit Line: Gift of Leonard and Paula Granoff
Mediums: oil
Mediums Description: oil on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Occupation — farm — dairy
Animal — cattle
Landscape — phenomenon — rainbow
Animal — dog
Children
Figure group — male and female
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.