View of Lake Pepin, Minnesota (1862): Art, History and Details

View of Lake Pepin, Minnesota (1862) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Robert S. Duncanson (American, 1821–1872).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Duncanson was the first African American painter to achieve recognition at home and abroad. Although most of his career was spent in Cincinnati, he painted this calm, panoramic scene during a journey up the Mississippi River to Canada, which he likely made to escape the upheaval of the Civil War. Duncanson worked in Montreal and London, England, before returning home after the war.

Object facts

• Title: View of Lake Pepin, Minnesota
• Date: 1862
• Creator attribution: Robert S. Duncanson (American, 1821–1872)
• Culture: America
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 38.5 x 63 x 6.5 cm (15 3/16 x 24 13/16 x 2 9/16 in.); Unframed: 30.2 x 54.5 cm (11 7/8 x 21 7/16 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1947.198

A detail from the museum

The sport of waterskiing was invented on Lake Pepin in 1922.

Collection credit

Gift of William Macbeth

Further reading listed by the museum

• Porter, James A. Ten Afro-American Artists of the Nineteenth Century. Washington DC: Gallery of Art, Howard University, 1967.
• Duncanson, Robert S. Robert S. Duncanson: A Centennial Exhibition. Cincinnati, OH: Cincinnati Art Museum,1972.
• Coen, Rena Neumann. Painting and Sculpture in Minnesota, 1820-1914. Minneapolis, MN: Published by the University of Minnesota Press for the University Gallery of the University of Minnesota, 1976.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.