Valley Pasture

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

About the painting

Particulars

Neighbors at Smithsonian American Art Museum

On the same theme · Mountains

Unknown

What it shows

In the catalog

Sources

Still Life with Fruit and Nuts

Landscape with Shepherd

Landscape with Cows Watering in a Stream

Landscape with Campsite

Landscape with Sheep

Landscape with Family by Lake

Vale of Kashmir

River Scene

Muskrat, before 1997

Cane with Boot-Shaped Handle, late 19th-early 20th century

San Jose, late 19th-early 20th century

Nuestra Senora del Carmen, ca. late 19th-early 20th century

San Rafael, late 19th-early 20th century

Worrying Mother Pig Toy, 20th century (pre-1960s)

Bright Light at Russell's Corners, 1946

Fish Decoy, ca. 1940s

Half Dome and Moon, Yosemite Valley, 1960

Mount Williamson, Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California, 1944, printed 1960s

Clear Weather with a Southerly Wind, 1829 - 1833

The Great Wave off Kanagawa, 1830/33

Landscape with Sportsman and Dog, c. 1653

The Oxbow, 1836

The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, 1863

Tahitian Shore [recto], c. 1900