1859, Robert S. Duncanson, Waterfall on Mont-Morency -- Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington)
From the museum label:
From 1863 to 1865, Duncanson lived in Montreal, Canada, where he escaped the tumult of the US Civil War and enjoyed a warm reception among the city's artistic community. He used William Notman's photograph of Montmorency Falls, outside Quebec City, as the basis for this composition. Duncanson added a small rainbow at the base of the falls, a symbol of promise after a storm. The rainbow may gesture to the freedom he and others of African descent experienced in Canada, where slavery had been abolished since 1834 and where many who had self-emancipated in the United States sought safety.
This imagery recalls the words of African American abolitionist and poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who in 1856 wrote:
"Niagara, the great, the glorious Niagara, may hush your spirit with its ceaseless thunder; it may charm you with its robe of crested spray and rainbow crown; but the land of Freedom was a lesson of deeper significance than foaming waves or towering mountains."
1859, Robert S. Duncanson, Waterfall on Mont-Morency -- Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington)
From the museum label:
From 1863 to 1865, Duncanson lived in Montreal, Canada, where he escaped the tumult of the US Civil War and enjoyed a warm reception among the city's artistic community. He used William Notman's photograph of Montmorency Falls, outside Quebec City, as the basis for this composition. Duncanson added a small rainbow at the base of the falls, a symbol of promise after a storm. The rainbow may gesture to the freedom he and others of African descent experienced in Canada, where slavery had been abolished since 1834 and where many who had self-emancipated in the United States sought safety.
This imagery recalls the words of African American abolitionist and poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who in 1856 wrote:
"Niagara, the great, the glorious Niagara, may hush your spirit with its ceaseless thunder; it may charm you with its robe of crested spray and rainbow crown; but the land of Freedom was a lesson of deeper significance than foaming waves or towering mountains."