Robert S. Duncanson's Landscape with Rainbow, with a couple and dog walking toward a cottage.
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Smithsonian American Art Museum Open Access image CC0

Landscape with Rainbow

by Robert S. Duncanson

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
76.3 x 132.7 cm (30 x 52 1/4 inches)
Year
1859
Availability
In a museum collection, not for sale
Collection
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Accession Number
1983.95.160
Credit Line
Gift of Leonard and Paula Granoff
Copyright
Public domain, museum record marked free to use
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Description

A couple and dog walk through green pasture toward a cottage at the end of a rainbow. Cattle move home beneath a sky that has just cleared.

Look Closer

Follow the rainbow down to the cottage, then trace the cattle moving the same way. Duncanson made every living thing head toward shelter. The promise is built into the direction of the scene.

How It Was Made, and What Changed

The Smithsonian identifies Duncanson as the country's best-known African American painter around the Civil War. It reads this calm pasture as a vision of people living in harmony with nature and as a late hope for peace before the war began.