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By Michael F. Meyer | Meyer Fine Art Gallery
Robert S. Duncanson (1821-1872), was a Black Hudson River School artist who painted the American South before the Civil War. Widely famous during his lifetime, this artist’s forgotten courageous journey through the antebellum South has never been exhibited or researched until now. Duncanson brilliantly created captivating landscape paintings that come alive to the viewer, by focusing on the minute details of nature and of the stories he wished to communicate.
Robert Duncanson’s American scenes of the South often included Underground Railroad imagery and the mountain ridge lines that could be followed as pathways to the North. Many of his paintings were highly landmark driven with details that make these vistas identifiable today. Is it possible that Duncanson painted these historical landmarks to lead the enslaved people of America to freedom? Art historian Michael Meyer believes it is possible.
His research reveals that Duncanson certainly did that in New England. Robert Duncanson painted numerous mountain landmarks along the Grand Trunk Railroad that went from Portland, Maine to Montreal on the north side of the White Mountains and entered into the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. A Canadian-based and London stock-owned railway advertised in American newspapers that, along the Grand Trunk Railroad, “Negros ride for free to freedom.” This further proves the significance of the underlying stories of his works, especially since these locations were clustered around a railroad that helped enslaved fugitives make it to freedom.
In the 1840s, Robert Duncanson lived in Mount Healthy, Ohio, one of the strongest abolitionist communities in America. He lived amongst some of the most famous conductors of the Underground Railroad. He donated paintings to be auctioned off to help the “cause.” These funds were needed to help feed, clothe, and transport the runaways. The late expert on Duncanson, Joseph Ketner, stated that Duncanson would house the runaways in his home, located on the Hamilton Turnpike. Duncanson was by no means a standby in the fight for freedom, yet he was propelled to do more. This need drove him to “the frontline” of the fight, to the South.
When he set out on his southern journey, the current evidence suggests that he avoided going through Kentucky, possibly due to all the slave catchers, and traveled east on the Ohio River towards West Virginia and Pennsylvania. In West Virginia, he painted the town of Parsons on the Cheat River, Seneca Rock, the Gauley River, and the New River. Traveling further east, Duncanson spent a significant amount of time painting Virginia’s landscapes in the Shenandoah Valley, the Blue Ridge Mountains and painted the Cascade Gorge at the Homestead in Hot Springs.
This gorge, even today, is a well-visited location in Virginia, located just behind the Omni Homestead Resort. This place famously accommodated both black and white people for months at a time. The Hot Springs and the neighboring town of Warm Springs were famous for their medicinal purposes. Here, Duncanson had a safe place to stay with wealthy patrons who might pay for a tangible remembrance of their visit or even a quick portrait of themselves or family members.
Duncanson traveled further south to sketch landscapes and waterfalls in western Carolina. He painted in areas around Asheville and traveled through the mountains using the Old Stagecoach Road, which today is the Blue Ridge Parkway. He painted mountain peaks such as Lane Pinnacle, the Great Craggies, Mount Mitchell, Potato Hill, and Cattail in the Black Mountains. As he approached the Linville Gorge, he sketched Jonas Ridge, Hawksbill, and Table Rock. In the Linville Gorge, he painted the Linville Falls and scenes from the gorge floor along the raging waters, looking up at the peaks. He would eventually go as far east as Morganton, North Carolina, and painted the original homestead and the Seven Sisters in the current Town of Black Mountain.
Some of Duncanson’s compositions tell moving stories of freedom, like that of Jacob Cummings. It took Cummings more than four years to walk to freedom from Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was depicted in Duncanson’s 1851 painting titled Lookout Mountain Crossing the Tennessee River at Chattanooga. Jacob Cummings was an enslaved man to John Smith, a heavy-handed master who punished Cummings for the mistakes of other slaves. Mr. Leonard, a local merchant, and quiet abolitionist, had heard of the mistreatment and sought out Cummings to teach him about directions: using the North Star as a compass, and the moss on the north side of trees when the nights were cloudy.
Cummings utilized this advice, and a map, to start his courageous escape north. Duncanson depicted historically significant landmarks in Tennessee such as Lookout Mountain, Moccasin Bend, and the Tennessee River to further tell the stories of escaped slaves and the Underground Railroad. He sometimes blatantly showed the runaway, and other times used symbols such as “cattle”, a code word used in public, by like-minded people, abolitionists, who were trying to help runaways.
In another monumental painting, titled: “Sketching Lookout Mountain at Moccasin Bend, Chattanooga, TN,” Duncanson thoughtfully depicts himself seated with a sketchbook, as his wife stands behind him and gazes at the view. Moccasin Bend was the site where in 1838, the Cherokee were encamped and then marched out west in the “Trail of Tears”. One year later, in 1839, this was also the site where Jacob Cummings began his escape from the bonds of slavery. To conjure this story, Duncanson included a figure much like Mr. Leonard from Lookout Mountain Crossing the Tennessee River at Chattanooga. This placement of him sketching alongside his wife, at this location, where freedom was taken away and taken back, alludes to the idea “lookout, the fate of others could be your own, the good and the bad.” Duncanson, whose parents and grandparents had all been enslaved, painted these stories of bondage and freedom so carefully, clearly cognizant that his fate could have been drastically different.
Robert Duncanson’s Southern works possess an urgency seldom seen in art that propelled him beyond the artistic need for expression. One that would cause him to risk his own freedom and personal safety to achieve its end. For there can be no higher calling than that of freedom, regardless of such a dire price to pay for failures, such as beatings, re-enslavement, or death. Some of these works amply illustrate this sobering reality with a haunting mood, amidst landscapes of terrifying beauty.
Robert S. Duncanson’s sublime art tells the story of black history that is essential for all to learn. His concern for the plight of his brethren compelled him to treat these stories and landscapes with detail and care. Unfortunately due to the lack of real and honest research Duncanson has been greatly misrepresented. It’s astonishing that no American museum or institution, black or white, has NEVER undertaken an exhibition of this scale or touched on the topic so near to the artist’s heart.
One can speculate as to their reasons why, or simply write it off as to their lack of qualifications in discerning the artist’s unique code of subject as compared to his contemporaries. Now it is clear, Robert Duncanson is to the South, what Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran are to the West, and what Frederic E Church is to the Catskills and New England, except for one major difference, while Duncanson’s paler peers looked west at the setting sun, with luminism often being a symbol of manifest destiny, for this artist, it was a pivot of 90 degrees north, freedom or bust.
There is a lot to learn from “Robert Duncanson and his Remarkable Southern Travels,” at Meyer Fine Art in Fredericksburg, Virginia, we have endeavored to share the over 20 years of true research we have on this artist.
Our current exhibition of 40 paintings from this impeccable artist will be showing until September 14, open Wednesday-Saturday 11 am-7pm, or by appointment. There is no admission fee, so come see Robert S. Duncanson’s beautiful but forgotten Southern American landscapes!
Mayer Fine Art Gallery
1015 CAROLINE ST, FREDERICKSBURG
VA 22401, United States
(914) 391-0608
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