1867
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Vale of Kashmir is a 1867 unspecified by Robert S. Duncanson, a Hudson River School Movement work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a wide, dreamy valley with soft green hills, a winding river, and a group of people in fancy robes stepping off a boat near a palace. This painting was made by Robert S. Duncanson, one of the first African American artists to gain attention in the U.S. and Europe. He painted it after reading a poem about a princess traveling to India—though here, the scene looks more like a peaceful American landscape than a foreign one. To see more of his work, look up Robert S. Duncanson (American, 1821–1872).
Cincinnati-based Duncanson was the first African American artist to achieve recognition both nationally and abroad. This panoramic painting, one of his grandest, was inspired by an episode in Thomas Moore’s then-popular epic poem, Lalla-Rookh (1817), which describes a Persian princess’s journey to the Indian subcontinent to be married. In Duncanson’s conception, members of a courtly entourage depart a quasi-Islamic palace, arriving by boat onto a scrim of land where they ascend a monumental staircase to a plaza with a fountain spraying an impressive plume of water. Despite these substantial…
During the Civil War, Duncanson relocated to Montreal, where he inspired several Canadian landscape painters.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Robert Seldon Duncanson (c. 1821 – December 21, 1872) was a 19th-century American landscapist of European and African ancestry. Inspired by famous American landscape artists like Thomas Cole, Duncanson created renowned…
See the richer artist pageYour cart is empty
Explore artworks →
