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| Accession # | 2020.13.1 |
|---|---|
| Artist | Robert Seldon Duncanson |
| Title | Copy after Thomas Cole's "Dream of Arcadia" |
| Date | 1852 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | frame: 34 1/8 x 52 x 4 in. (86.7 x 132.1 x 10.2 cm) 24 x 42 in. (61 x 106.7 cm) |
| Signed | Signed and dated lower center |
| Credit Line | Gift of Charlynn and Warren Goins |
| Location | American Identities: Colony to Nation / Inventing American Landscape |
Curatorial Remarks: The African American painter Robert S. Duncanson was a leading practitioner of the Hudson River School of landscape painting. Dream of Arcadia is based on an 1838 painting by the school’s “founding father,” Thomas Cole. It typifies the style in its naturalistic details and romanticized vision of nature as symbolic of America’s national destiny. Its subject—the classical paradise of Arcadia—perhaps reflects hopes for a world free of the prejudice and strife of pre–Civil War America.
Duncanson settled in the Cincinnati area in about 1841. Cincinnati was then a hotbed of abolitionist activity, and home to a large population of free African Americans.
