The Columbia Museum of Art received the tremendous painting “Landscape with Fantastic Architecture” by 19th century artist Robert S. Duncanson and celebrated its reveal this Tuesday.
Board of the Columbia Museum of Art member Michaela Brown, when asked about the importance of the painting, was awestruck that the painting got here in the first place.
“I think it’s amazing to have the art here, especially since we are in the South,” she said.
Despite no access to art school or formal training and racial barriers, Duncanson’s art is detailed, intricate and quintessential to the Hudson River School. The Hudson River School, an esteemed art school, trained artists to paint detailed, creationist artworks with an enormous sense of space that CMA Chief Curator Will South described as parables.
While Duncanson had inauspicious beginnings, wandering around the Midwest painting portraits and landscapes for anyone willing to pay him, he later became a renowned master of landscapes. During his time in Cincinnati, Duncanson garnered patrons who later sponsored him on two trips to Europe for artistic endeavors and commissioned much of his early work.
One of Duncanson's paintings, inspired by Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem "The Lotos-eaters" and aptly named “Land of the Lotus Eaters,” was not only praised by Tennyson in person but also by the King of Sweden, as it now resides in the Swedish Royal Collection.
Duncanson's other works, both murals and panoramas, not only depicted American life but explicated it through the lens of an African-American. He would often subtly insert racial undertones in paintings.
An example of this is “Uncle Tom and Little Eva,” inspired by the book “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The two individuals, an African-American man and a young Caucasian girl, are shown with their heads on the same level, the image tenderly depicting her hand in his.
Duncanson's "Landscape with Fantastic Architecture" is no exception to the racial undertones, though it may take a little extra effort to know that.
“You have an African-American in an ideal, splendid, lush, Arcadian landscape doing something normal,” South said. “It’s a normative experience and a happy one — and a good one.”
South explained that the painting, when enlarged by applying a macro lens, reveals that there is a small African-American figure carrying a duck and fish over his shoulder. This detail is astonishing because the figure, in actuality, is approximately three-sixteenths of an inch, which means that Duncanson would have had to paint the figure with a one-hair paintbrush and a magnifying glass.
It’s extraordinary that the Columbia Museum of Art managed to acquire "Landscape with Fantastic Architecture" not only because of Duncanson's subtle racial commentary but because of the feat of skill and dexterity required to include the comment.