Robert S. Duncanson - Legacy

Legacy

Although not very well known by the general public, Robert Scott Duncanson had a significant impact on American art. As the first American painter to take up residence in Canada and focus on its landscape, Duncanson’s influence has been felt there as well. At a gallery showing in Harlem, the New York Amsterdam News called the works by Duncanson “pioneering.” It is not the genre he chose to paint in that was pioneering, it was the subtle way he infused his paintings with an African American sensibility without creating what the art world would categorize as African American paintings. Although Duncanson’s son urged him to be more outright African American in his works, Duncanson wrote to his son, “I have no color on the brain; all I have on the brain is paint.” This highlights his laid-back approach to racial tensions that the art world had not seen before. Audiences looking at Duncanson’s work have to look hard, beyond the obvious associations with themes of landscape and idealized lands, to see the commentary on a post Civil War America and a socially aware African American artist. Instead, Richard Powell of American Visions says that Duncanson’s success is a “victory over society’s presumptions of what African American artist should create.” Duncanson’s artwork has become a useful tool in teaching art students about the history of African American artists.