Race and Racism in Nineteenth-Century Art

The Ascendency of Robert Duncanson, Edward Bannister, and Edmonia Lewis

Naurice Frank Woods Jr.

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781496834355, 9781496834348
• eBook ISBN: 9781496834362
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Painters Robert Duncanson (ca. 1821–1872) and Edward Bannister (1828–1901) and sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis (ca. 1844–1907) each became accomplished African American artists. But as emerging art makers of color during the antebellum period, they experienced numerous incidents of racism that severely hampered their pursuits of a profession that many in the mainstream considered the highest form of social cultivation. Despite barriers imposed upon them due to their racial inheritance, these artists shared a common cause in demanding acceptance alongside their white contemporaries as capable painters and sculptors on local, regional, and international levels.Author Naurice Frank Woods Jr. provides an in-depth examination of the strategies deployed by Duncanson, Bannister, and Lewis that enabled them not only to overcome prevailing race and gender inequality, but also to achieve a measure of success that eventually placed them in the top rank of nineteenth-century American art.Unfortunately, the racism that hampered these three artists throughout their careers ultimately denied them their rightful place as significant contributors to the development of American art. Dominant art historians and art critics excluded them in their accounts of the period. In this volume, Woods restores their artistic legacies and redeems their memories, introducing these significant artists to rightful, new audiences.

CHAPTER ONE

Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821–1872)

Fig. 1.1. Robert Seldon Duncanson, Photograph by William Notman in Montreal, QC, in 1864, The McCord Museum.

Robert Seldon Duncanson [fig. 1.1] was America’s first great painter of African descent.¹ His accomplishments placed him in the first rank of nineteenth-century American landscape artists, but his race created challenging societal impediments in the way he pursued his artistic muse—in his social interactions with whites, in the way he produced his art, in the clientele that patronized him, and on deeply personal levels. As demonstrated here, Duncanson not only survived as an artist of color living in antebellum times but also managed to establish a solid reputation as one of America’s finest representatives of the immensely popular Hudson River School of painting.

The Early Years

Information on the early years of Duncanson’s life is scarce and often misinformed. For many years, his biography indicated that he was the son of a white Scottish Canadian father who gave him the middle name Scott—both are incorrect.² While it is possible that Scottish blood flowed through his veins, based on the family surname and his noticeable white ancestry, his lineage is traceable to freed slaves from Virginia who migrated to Fayette, New York.³ Census records there listed his father, John Dean Duncanson (1771–1851), as a mulatto carpenter and housepainter. His mother, Lucy Nickles Duncanson (1781–1854), was also mulatto. Robert was born in Fayette, New York, around 1821. The family settled in Monroe, Michigan, located thirty-five miles south of Detroit, about 1832. John Duncanson likely trained Robert and his four brothers in the family trades of skilled handiwork, thus allowing them to gain useful experience to launch their own careers.

As light-complexioned “mulattoes,” the Duncanson family benefited from occasional relaxed rules of social engagement. While they certainly experienced some disadvantages by having their African ancestry documented in census records and known publicly, their physical “blurring” of distinct racial categories often worked to their advantage. By not fitting in completely with either designated racial group, the Duncansons, at times, leveraged their light complexions for social and economic gain. This crossing the “color line” is addressed in detail later in this chapter and acknowledges the complexities many mixed-race families endured in securing a stable and productive position in antebellum society.

The first publicly documented appearance of Robert Duncanson in Monroe was on April 17, 1838.⁴ The seventeen-year-old formed a business partnership with John Gamblin, and they advertised their services in the Monroe Gazette. Their announcement read, “John Gamblin and R. Duncanson, Painters and Glaziers, beg leave to acquaint their friends and the citizens of Monroe and its vicinity, that they have established themselves in the above business and respectively solicit patronage.”⁵ Although Duncanson was publicizing his services for house painting and not easel painting, many itinerant house painters of the nineteenth century were often pressed into several artistic services, including portrait painting, carriage painting, and interior wall decorations. There are no known Duncanson paintings from this period, but perhaps he began to experiment with the rudiments of art at the request of area residents.

Duncanson’s partnership with Gamblin dissolved the following year. The reason for the venture’s failure is unknown. It is possible that competition forced them out of business, or perhaps Duncanson’s affinity with art had grown so strong that he decided to develop his talent elsewhere. Ultimately, his decision to embark on a career as a professional artist was almost without precedent for an African American. In fact, although he was probably unaware of any Black predecessors in art, only portrait painter Joshua Johnson (also known as Johnston), active between 1796 and 1824 in the Baltimore area, managed to compile a large body of work by gaining access to the city’s upper-class art patrons when many of its African American population remained enslaved.⁶

Thus, Duncanson’s decision to enter the field of art is pioneering, but with few opportunities for formal training or steady patronage, his chances for success were infinitesimal. However, he was ready for the challenge and decided to leave Monroe and attempt to establish himself as a creditable and productive professional painter.

Black and White Relations in Cincinnati

Between 1840 and 1841, Duncanson settled in Mt. Healthy, Ohio, located about fifteen miles north of Cincinnati. This small community had a reputation for its abolitionist sentiments and sympathetic treatment of African Americans. It was an ideal place for Duncanson to establish his good character locally, raise the level of his painting skills, and contact people who could benefit his career. In addition, he married a Mt. Healthy resident and former Tennessee-born slave, Rebecca Graham. The two lived with her parents, Reuben and Martha Graham.

Despite the receptive climate of Mt. Healthy, Duncanson sought to move to Cincinnati, where a developing community of artists beckoned. Yet the city teemed with racists and proslavery advocates, making his move potentially dangerous.

The doctrine of African American inferiority was well entrenched in Cincinnati. Dr. Daniel Drake, a local physician, expressed this belief saying that “we do not need an African population. That people … are a serving people, parasitic to the white man in propensity, and devoted to his menial employments.”⁷ A similar position was taken by Charles R. Ramsay, editor of the anti-abolitionist paper the Daily Cincinnati Republican, and Commercial Register. He stated, “The liberal and honorable professions are to him [the African American] forbidden fruit…. He cannot even embark in business of any kind other than on a meagre scale. His fate is to toil and drudge for a subsistence… Whether bondsman or freeman, he must be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. Nature has decreed it and her laws cannot be changed.”⁸

A Cincinnati newspaper echoed the idea of racial inferiority when it carried this assessment:

History informs us that the white skin, from time immemorial, has been of superior order. Civilization and all the arts and sciences have originated with the white race, whilst the blacks have made scarcely any advance from the state of nature…. The darker the various shades of color, descending down to the jet black, the lower they descend in the scale of intellect and enterprise.⁹

These statements were indicative of a community with a deep-rooted history of racial oppression that led historian Leon Litwack to conclude that even up to the eve of the Civil War, “the northern Negro remained largely disenfranchised, segregated, and economically oppressed,” and perhaps more importantly, “change did not seem imminent.”¹⁰

And while Cincinnati was in the slave-free North, it was located directly across the Ohio River from the slave state of Kentucky. Many of Cincinnati’s white citizens prospered from trade with its southern neighbor by supplying farm implements, heavy machinery, furniture, and transportation, thus creating a mutually beneficial climate of social and economic contact. However, an increasing number of fugitive slaves seeking sanctuary in the city led to rising racial tensions, and strong proslavery endorsements spread widely throughout the white community.

By the time of Duncanson’s arrival in Cincinnati in 1841, the city had a long history of strained race relations, including a mass exodus of African Americans to Canada in 1829 following a violent race riot.¹¹ African Americans who remained in the city continued to experience a racially hostile climate. They knew that their survival was dependent upon their ability to endure overt racism without triggering further confrontations with whites. They also realized that the only way to succeed was to suppress their indignation at being treated as socially unacceptable and intellectually inferior and deal with it accordingly. Carter G. Woodson explained: “Negroes were not welcome in the white churches… Colored ministers were treated with very little consideration by the white clergy, as they feared that they might lose caste and be compelled to give up their churches. The colored people made little or no effort to go to white theaters or hotels and did not attempt to ride in public conveyances on equal footing with members of the other race. Not even white and colored children dared to play together to the extent that such was permitted in the South.¹²

Despite the racism that dominated social contact in Cincinnati, African Americans gradually made some notable progress. Woodson observed, “Undaunted by this persistent opposition the Negroes of Cincinnati achieved so much during the years between 1835 and 1840 that they deserved to be ranked among the most progressive people in the world.”¹³ For example, 1840 records showed that ninety African Americans were listed in twenty-one skilled occupations such as barbers, carpenters, shoemakers, bricklayers, and coopers.¹⁴ According to Woodson, “It was not uncommon for white artisans to solicit employment of colored men… White mechanics not only worked with colored men but often associated with them, patronized the same barber shop, and went to the same places of amusement.”¹⁵ Duncanson was likely aware of these developments.

Despite some advancement, most of Cincinnati’s African American population still lived in poverty and faced racial oppression daily. The supporters of racism in the city waged a constant campaign that effectively portrayed Blacks as worthless, dissolute, lazy, stupid, and incompetent.¹⁶ To combat this negative image, many African Americans made a strong, conscientious effort to present themselves as the picture of respectability and self-improvement—a strategy that worked to some extent. James H. Perkins, a prominent white citizen of the city, remarked, “There is no question, I presume, that the colored population of Cincinnati, oppressed as it has been by our state laws as well as by prejudice, has risen more rapidly than almost any other people in any part of the world.”¹⁷

The apparent “renaissance” of African American life in Cincinnati was shattered on August 29, 1841, when a riot erupted between Blacks and whites.¹⁸ This violence, initiated by whites from Kentucky, lasted for several nights as mobs of up to fifteen hundred controlled the nighttime streets. African American homes were attacked, men arrested, and women and children forced to flee their neighborhoods. Another target was the printing press of abolitionist James G. Birney’s paper, The Philanthropist. Ironically, a committee of Cincinnati’s leading white citizens, including Judge Jacob Burnet and Duncanson’s future benefactor Nicholas Longworth, had earlier demanded that the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society cease publication of the paper.¹⁹

The riot of 1841 further divided Black and white citizens. The few white patrons and friends of the African American community seemed to have abandoned most of their efforts to help.²⁰ Still, Duncanson’s desire to become a professional artist compelled him to risk venturing into Cincinnati and find ways to launch his career.

The Quest to Be an Artist

For Duncanson, the challenge of becoming a successful artist was daunting. There is no record of other African American artists operating in Cincinnati during that period, and it is unlikely that there were any. There was no advanced training he could receive from a member of his race, and he had nowhere to exhibit his work within the Black community. Any assistance Duncanson found to connect with Cincinnati’s art establishment would have to come from benevolent whites.

Duncanson may have been enticed to go to Cincinnati because of recent developments in the arts. Prior to the late 1830s, there were no schools for art instruction, and the sales artists realized were usually restricted to individual patrons. The Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts was established in 1838 with the objective of correcting those shortcomings. The first exhibition featured more than 150 paintings but failed to attract a sizable audience or buyers. Cincinnati was still very much a frontier town, and most of the public lacked sophistication and knowledge to appreciate fine art. That role remained for wealthy patrons to privately support artists. Another art-oriented organization, the Section of the Fine Arts of the Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge, appeared in Cincinnati in 1840. Its goal was to allow professionals, artists, and the public to attend lectures on the fine arts, the practical arts, and moral and intellectual philosophy.²¹ The group also held art exhibitions and sketching classes.²²

Cincinnatian Charles Cist wrote of the organization’s effort to uplift the cultural image of the city and stated, “The Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge has formed the worthy, even if bold, project, of seeking to realize for Cincinnati some of those benefits which seem peculiarly to belong to cities.”²³ Cist noted there were nineteen artists working in Cincinnati the year Duncanson arrived in the city. Despite the small number of practicing artists, Cist was certain Cincinnati would one day gain recognition as the birthplace of a national art.²⁴

Duncanson was aware of this dawn of art culture in Cincinnati and decided the time was right to become a part of it, despite the “liabilities” of being African American. His earliest dated work, Portrait of a Mother and Daughter (1841), was painted in Cincinnati and reveals much about Duncanson’s potential as an artist. The identities of the sitters are not known, but they are white and appear to be of middle to upper class. The work is ambitious even for more skilled painters—a challenging double portrait with accurate attention given to the faces and the textural qualities of the clothing that rivals some of the best limners of the period.²⁵ As is the case with many of the limners, the mother’s seated position seems stiff and forced, due to a lack of proper understanding of human anatomy; but the daughter, who stands relaxed next to her mother and whose arm rests comfortably around her shoulder, displays a great deal of naturalism. More importantly, this portrait highlights Duncanson’s ability to be an acute observer of details found in the natural world—a quality that he applied expertly in his future landscape paintings. Therefore, based on his handling of complex compositional elements in this painting, Duncanson, as aspiring artist in 1841, appeared to have all the necessary artistic tools and sensibilities to advance to the next level if only he could find suitable instruction to develop them: a formidable task indeed.

There is no record of Duncanson enrolling in any of the sketching classes at the Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge or of him participating in the programs held there. Racial discrimination probably forbade his attendance, but he managed to gain their attention. Surprisingly, he made his formal debut as an artist on June 9, 1842, when the Society for the Promoti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The “Artistic Ancestors” of Henry O. Tanner
• Chapter One: Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821–1872)
• Chapter Two: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828–1901)
• Chapter Three: Mary Edmonia Lewis (ca. 1844–1907)
• Epilogue: American Masters Reclaimed
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Author