Pompeii+(1855)

Date: 1855
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1983/1983.95.158_1a.jpg?itok=mYt1y7ub width="258" height="323" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/pompeii-7607"]] || Title: **Pompeii**

Artist: **Robert S. Duncanson** Born: New York 1821 Died: Detroit, Michigan 1872

Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 21 x 17 in. (53.3 x 43.2 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Dr. Richard Frates

Accession: 1983.95.158 ||

Robert Duncanson's patrons in Cincinnati sponsored his first trip to Europe in 1853, allowing him to participate in a rite of passage for American artists. He compared his skills with those of European painters and claimed, "Of all the landscapes I saw in Europe...I do not feel discouraged." Duncanson imagined Pompeii around the time of its first excavation in 1747, showing men in eighteenth-century costume admiring the ruins and searching for buried treasure. Such fanciful depictions were popular among nineteenth-century American patrons, who made the ancient city at the foot of Vesuvius a stop on their grand tours.
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