A painting by a 19th Century artist who was based in Cincinnati was in the spotlight after this week’s inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
For the traditional Inaugural Luncheon on Jan. 20, First Lady Jill Biden chose to display “Landscape with a Rainbow” by Robert S. Duncanson, an African-American artist who was very active in Cincinnati in the 1840s-50s, just before the Civil War.
The luncheon has been a post-inauguration tradition since 1981 and involves the President and their family choosing a painting to adorn the wall in the National Statuary Hall in the Capitol Building, where guests enjoy the festivities.
Duncanson completed “Landscape with a Rainbow” in 1859 and may represent much more than meets the eye to the Biden family and America, notes Eleanor Jones Harvey, curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where the painting is stored.
“[‘Landscape with a Rainbow’] evokes the Covington/Cincinnati region,” Jones Harvey says in a blog post about the piece and its impact. In the painting, Duncanson depicts a couple strolling along a lush, green landscape with cattle in the distance, but the focal point seems to be the rainbow peeking through the right corner.
Harvey says that Duncanson painted “Landscape with a Rainbow” as social tensions rose and the Civil War was looming. “[He] presents this scene as a vision of future peace and prosperity regardless of race – an aspiration we all should embrace,” Jones Harvey says.
The Taft Museum of Art, located on Pike Street in Cincinnati, has eight landscape murals by Duncanson that were commissioned by Nicolas Longworth in 1850. The museum used to be a residential home, and Duncanson painted the murals for Longworth, not knowing they’d remain for hundreds of years. WatchTamera Muente, associate curator at Taft, give a detailed talk about these landscape murals.
Muente tells CityBeat she was thrilled to learn that Dr. Biden chose Duncanson’s work for the luncheon. “A lot of people in Cincinnati don’t really know about him,” she says. “The national attention is really exciting. Those of us who know about Duncanson and his work really want his story to be known.”
Duncanson lived during a time of turbulence and violence leading up to the Civil War. His paintings, however, often depicted peaceful, natural scenes of beauty.
“I feel like this might be one of the reasons why Dr. Biden selected the painting,” Muente says. “Here’s someone who is achieving something remarkable, an African-American artist against the odds, painting such beautiful imagery during a time of great crisis.”
“It’s an example of the power of art and the power of beauty during these really difficult times,” she adds.
Mostly self-taught, Duncanson was the first African-American artist to achieve an international reputation. He was born in New York, grew up in Michigan and traveled to Cincinnati to pursue painting as a young man. Eventually, he was inspired to become a landscape painter after seeing the work of Thomas Cole.
The beauty of the Ohio River Valley entranced the young artist, and many of his landscapes were based on the scenery around Cincinnati. Eventually, he was able to travel to Europe, where he studied master paintings in person and was able to meet other artists like him. He returned to Cincinnati for a brief time but fled in 1863 at the start of the Civil War.
He was more than a refugee during this time, though. Traveling to Montreal, the UK, and Scotland, Duncanson used his time away as an opportunity to grow more in his skills. He sold paintings to the King of Sweden and even met Queen Victoria.
Duncanson’s legacy lives on in Cincinnati today. In 1986, the Taft Museum of Art established the Duncanson Artist-in-Residence Program. It was created to honor contemporary Black artists. “Each year, the selected artist works directly with the public and with area schools,” the Artist-in-Residence page declares.
Learn more about Duncanson on the Taft Museum of Art’s website.
This article appears in Jan 1-31, 2021.