?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 25,000
ROBERT SCOTT DUNCANSON (1821 - 1872) Untitled (Landscape).
Oil on paper board, circa 1860-65. 190x241 mm; 7 1/2x9 1/2 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection.
This inviting painting is a wonderful example of the important 19th-century painter Robert S. Duncanson's landscapes. The son of a biracial tradesman from Virginia, and the grandson of a freed slave, Duncanson apprenticed in his youth to his family's housepainting and carpentry business in Canada. A self-taught artist, he began his career by copying popular prints. Duncanson moved to Cincinnati, the city with which he is most closely associated, in the 1840s.
This oval-shaped landscape, with its central figure departing a woodland scene, is from Duncanson's mature period. This time of great success was interrupted by the Civil War and the subsequent upheaval that it brought to his life in Cincinnati. At the beginning of the 1860s, he had obtained commercial success as an artist, with a thriving studio, numerous commissions and critical acclaim. By 1863, he had fled to Canada, and was traveling through England and Scotland by 1865.
Duncanson painted on board throughout his career--this painting is closely related in style to Autumn Landscape, 1864, formerly at Spanierman Gallery, with its rich impasto and handling of the trees and rocks. We would like to thank Joseph D. Ketner II, curator-in-residence at Emerson College and noted Robert S. Duncanson expert, for reviewing the work and for his examination report confirming this work.
