# Pompeii

- By: Robert S. Duncanson (born Fayette, NY 1821-died Detroit, MI 1872)
- Date: 1855
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Classification: Paintings
- Dimensions: 21 x 17 in. (53.3 x 43.2 cm.)
- Culture: Italy
- Credit line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Dr. Richard Frates
- Museum: [Smithsonian Institution](https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=7607)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/328f67dec4745df8b9b2f9b212382653.jpg
- Who can see it: Kids profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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