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Vale of Kashmir

1867
(American, 1821–1872)
America
oil on canvas
Framed: 94.9 x 154.6 x 12.1 cm (37 3/8 x 60 7/8 x 4 3/4 in.); Unframed: 73 x 132.4 cm (28 3/4 x 52 1/8 in.)
Sundry Purchase Fund 2014.12
Location: 206 American Landscape
Public Domain
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During the Civil War, Duncanson relocated to Montreal, where he inspired several Canadian landscape painters.

Description

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 storytelling details, the human elements remain subordinate to the overwhelming splendor of the natural landscape in and of itself.
Horizontally oriented oil painting with a hazy mountain against a blue sky in the background descending into a valley in green and orange tones in the the lower half of the painting, a river winding toward the lower right corner. In the lower right, minute figures ascend a curved staircase towards a fountain shooting a stream of water straight into the air.

Vale of Kashmir

1867

Robert S. Duncanson

(American, 1821–1872)
America

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