Robert Seldon Duncanson

Duncanson began his career in Cincinnati as a house painter and carpenter before teaching himself to paint. One of his earliest and most important commissions was from the prominent art patron, Nicholas Longwoth, who hired him to paint a group of murals to decorate his home, Belmont, now the Taft Museum in Cincinnati. These murals are now considered the most ambitious and accomplished domestic mural paintings created in the U.S. before the Civil War. In 1853, Longworth sponsored Duncanson's first trip to Europe with fellow artist, William L. Sonntag. At the time, these two artists were widely regarded as the major landscape painters in the Midwest. From 1863 to 1865, Duncanson was in Montreal, Canada, where his art helped to promote a native landscape movement. He then went to England where he spent time travelling in Scotland. By 1867, he had returned to Cincinnati where he remained until his death except for a brief trip to Scotland from 1970 to 1871. Tragically at the height of his career and fame, he became mentally ill. He died in the Michigan State Retreat, a mental hospital in 1872.