Vale of Kashmir
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
unframed: 73 × 132.4 cm · framed: 94.9 × 154.6 × 12.1 cm
Classification
Painting
Department
American Painting and Sculpture
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Sundry Purchase Fund
Accession Number
2014.12
Tags
About this artwork
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 stai...