Landscape with Cows Watering in a Stream

Robert S. Duncanson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Born free in upstate New York, the Black American painter Duncanson established an international reputation for his Hudson River School inspired landscapes during the Civil War era. Self-taught, he began his career in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he came to the attention of abolitionist leaders, who later sponsored his study in Europe. By 1861, Duncanson was hailed in the American press as "the best landscape painter in the West." At the height of his career, he successfully toured his paintings in England and Scotland, where he lived for a period of time. Self-exiled in Montreal during the Civil War, Duncanson also helped launch a Canadian landscape movement.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art