Lot Essay
RELATED LITERATURE
S.T. Hufford, American Paintings from the Manoogian Collection, Washington, 1989, pp. 24-25, no. 6, illus.
Duncanson holds an important position in American art as the first African-American artist to achieve national and international recognition. His contemporaries recognized him as the leading landscapist west of the Allegheny mountains. He painted views of the American landscapes and historical-literary landscapes. The painter considered the literary landscapes his most important productions for their noble and didactic content. For his subject matter, Duncanson favored the literary works of British romantic authors and, during the 1860s, painted five works after Thomas Moore's popular orientalist poem Lalla Rookh (1817).
During the Civil War, artists could not travel as freely to sketch the landscape. To compensate for these restrictions, several artists formed the Cincinnati Sketch Club, modeled on the New York Sketch Club, in 1861. The club held bi-monthly meetings at which each participant would contribute a sketch of a predetermined literary subject. For the March 1863 meeting, the artists gathered to present their sketches after Moore's Lalla Rookh. The club stimulated Duncanson's interest in this poem, and his sketch (Private Collection) for this meeting provided the source for four additional paintings on this subject that would domiÿnate his work during the subsequent decade. Critics proclaimed that the sketches of Moore's Lalla Rookh "rival, in poetic sentiment, the most exquisite of the poet's matchless numbers" (Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, March 24, 1863). The year after the Sketch Club study Duncanson painted a full scale canvas that depicts the disembarkation of Lalla Rookh's boating party in the Vale of Kashmir where she was to meet her groom, the King of Lesser Bucharia. Duncanson derived the details from specific passageÿs in the poem including the wedding party and the foreground maidens who proclaim the paradisiacal qualities of the landscape singing, "oh! if there be an Elysium on earth,/It is this, it is this."
After a period of exile from the Civil War in Canada and England, Duncanson returned to the United States and created a series of paintings based upon the literary works of English authurs. In 1867, he created his most ambitious version of the Vale of Kashmir, now in the Manoogian Collection. In the 1867 version of Vale of Kashmir he resolved his interests in literary analogies and landscape aesthetics. The success of this canvas inspired him to create another version of the painting in 1870, the present canvas which is virtually identical to the 1867 canvas in composition and size. In both pictures, the artist subdued the overt literary references, reduced the anecdotal figure groups, and allowed the landscape motifs to convey the paradisiacal quality of the land described by Moore; only minor details distinguish the two paintings.
This painting will be included in Joseph D. Ketner's forthcoming monograph on Robert Duncanson to be published by the University of Missouri Press.
S.T. Hufford, American Paintings from the Manoogian Collection, Washington, 1989, pp. 24-25, no. 6, illus.
Duncanson holds an important position in American art as the first African-American artist to achieve national and international recognition. His contemporaries recognized him as the leading landscapist west of the Allegheny mountains. He painted views of the American landscapes and historical-literary landscapes. The painter considered the literary landscapes his most important productions for their noble and didactic content. For his subject matter, Duncanson favored the literary works of British romantic authors and, during the 1860s, painted five works after Thomas Moore's popular orientalist poem Lalla Rookh (1817).
During the Civil War, artists could not travel as freely to sketch the landscape. To compensate for these restrictions, several artists formed the Cincinnati Sketch Club, modeled on the New York Sketch Club, in 1861. The club held bi-monthly meetings at which each participant would contribute a sketch of a predetermined literary subject. For the March 1863 meeting, the artists gathered to present their sketches after Moore's Lalla Rookh. The club stimulated Duncanson's interest in this poem, and his sketch (Private Collection) for this meeting provided the source for four additional paintings on this subject that would domiÿnate his work during the subsequent decade. Critics proclaimed that the sketches of Moore's Lalla Rookh "rival, in poetic sentiment, the most exquisite of the poet's matchless numbers" (Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, March 24, 1863). The year after the Sketch Club study Duncanson painted a full scale canvas that depicts the disembarkation of Lalla Rookh's boating party in the Vale of Kashmir where she was to meet her groom, the King of Lesser Bucharia. Duncanson derived the details from specific passageÿs in the poem including the wedding party and the foreground maidens who proclaim the paradisiacal qualities of the landscape singing, "oh! if there be an Elysium on earth,/It is this, it is this."
After a period of exile from the Civil War in Canada and England, Duncanson returned to the United States and created a series of paintings based upon the literary works of English authurs. In 1867, he created his most ambitious version of the Vale of Kashmir, now in the Manoogian Collection. In the 1867 version of Vale of Kashmir he resolved his interests in literary analogies and landscape aesthetics. The success of this canvas inspired him to create another version of the painting in 1870, the present canvas which is virtually identical to the 1867 canvas in composition and size. In both pictures, the artist subdued the overt literary references, reduced the anecdotal figure groups, and allowed the landscape motifs to convey the paradisiacal quality of the land described by Moore; only minor details distinguish the two paintings.
This painting will be included in Joseph D. Ketner's forthcoming monograph on Robert Duncanson to be published by the University of Missouri Press.