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Valley Pasture
Robert S. Duncanson (born Fayette, NY 1821-died Detroit, MI 1872)
1857
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 32 1/4 x 48 in. (81.9 x 121.9 cm.)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Melvin and H. Alan Frank from the Frank Family Collection
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
A group of Cincinnati abolitionists recognized the talent of African American artist Robert Duncanson, bought his works, and sponsored his trips to Europe. These trips honed the artist's technique and gave him a chance to compare his work with the masters. His pastoral landscapes appear traditional, but may quietly evoke the most divisive issue America faced at mid-century. Tiny figures stand on the far banks of the river, and beyond them lies a dreamlike landscape of mountains and farms. This might represent the promised land of freedom that escaped slaves in the 1850s hoped to reach by swimming across the Ohio River to the free states of the North.Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
