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Robert S. Duncanson

Born: Fayette, NY, 1821
Died: Detroit, MI, 21 December 1872
Nationality: American
Background: 

son of free African-Americans; father was house painter/carpenter

Studies: 

 self-taught

Career: 

1840s – itinerant artist travelling between Cincinnati and Detroit

1848 – Cincinnati lawyer Nicolas Longsworth commissions 8 landscape panels for his home (Taft Museum, Cincinnati)

1853 – travels in Europe with landscape painter William Lewis Sonntag

1865 – exhibits at International Exposition in Dublin

1866 – returns to Cincinnati; begins suffering from dementia

1872 – experiences nervous breakdown; dies at the Michigan State Retreat

Travels

Europe (1853); Scotland, England, Ireland (1865)

Commissions from: 

Senator Leis Cass; James G. Birney, editor of The Philanthropist

Important Artworks: 

Blue Hole, Little Miami River, 1851 (Cincinnati Art Museum)