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Pompeii
Robert S. Duncanson (born Fayette, NY 1821-died Detroit, MI 1872)
1855
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 21 x 17 in. (53.3 x 43.2 cm.)
- Culture
- Italy
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Dr. Richard Frates
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Robert Duncanson's patrons in Cincinnati sponsored his first trip to Europe in 1853, allowing him to participate in a rite of passage for American artists. He compared his skills with those of European painters and claimed, "Of all the landscapes I saw in Europe...I do not feel discouraged." Duncanson imagined Pompeii around the time of its first excavation in 1747, showing men in eighteenth-century costume admiring the ruins and searching for buried treasure. Such fanciful depictions were popular among nineteenth-century American patrons, who made the ancient city at the foot of Vesuvius a stop on their grand tours.Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
