Duncanson leads us through this painting via two paths. One follows the right edge of the canvas until it disappears under foliage, obscuring its destination. The path to its left initially leads into the center of the painting, toward the pond, but then disappears into the ground before it reaches water’s edge. It is unclear why it disappears—perhaps the grass simply gets taller, or perhaps Duncanson is suggesting that we are unlikely to reach the pond anytime soon. This may be true in the reading of the landscape as a fantasy of future racial harmony. The female figure closest to the viewer, sitting under the tree in the right foreground, may have been sitting facing the rightmost path, but she has turned to look behind her, past the tree and toward the pond. Her exaggerated turn points our attention there as well, toward the three figures at the water’s edge.
\r\nMairead Horton
Princeton Class of 2017
(prepared for the course AAS 349 / ART 364, Seeing to Remember: Representing Slavery Across the Black Atlantic, Spring 2017)
Student label, AAS 349 / ART 364, Seeing to Remember: Representing Slavery Across the Black Atlantic, Spring 2017:
\r\nThe landscape painter Robert S. Duncanson was a freeborn African American who worked in Cincinnati and was recognized as the “best landscape painter in the West.” He worked in the manner of the Hudson River School and was also influenced by the French painter Claude Lorrain, whose work he saw on an abolitionist-financed trip to Europe in 1853. Duncanson was supported by many abolitionists, although he rarely included overt anti-slavery sentiments in his work.
\r\nHere, Duncanson recalls the landscapes of Claude through compositional layering: he painted a dark foreground with a large tree to the side, a brighter middle distance with a body of water and classical architecture on a hill behind it, and a background of blue mountains. Duncanson populated this Arcadian landscape with four figures of varying skin tones. The figure closest to the viewer sits under the tree in the right foreground. This figure appears to be a white woman, who turns to look behind her, past the tree and toward the pond. Her exaggerated turn points the viewer’s attention as well, toward the three figures at the pond. These figures range, from left to right, from black to brown to white in skin tone. The black and brown figures appear to be men, with the white figure seeming to be a woman. The black man is standing in a boat and appears to hold an oar or pole. Standing on the bank are the brown man and white woman, who appear to be conversing. It is unclear what the relations among these three figures are, and the black man may in fact be working for the pair who stand on the bank. Nevertheless, the three figures seem to be in harmony. Perhaps this harmony serves for Duncanson as a subtle anti-slavery argument. That this harmony exists in an Arcadian landscape, beneath a hill of classical architecture, gives Duncanson’s landscape the weight of classical history as well as more recent art history.
\r\nMairead Horton
Princeton Class of 2017