MS01.01.03.B02.F10.031

[crossed-out: -22-] 27

concerning the intellectual inferiority of Blacks from the minds of persons of liberal thought who saw art to be an act of the highest manifestation of the human spirit. Perhaps, it was in this sense that the artist felt his mission in life to be one devoted to the cause of making art instead of a cause which used art to carry a social message.
[crossed-out: His] Duncanson's artistry registered the poetic romance of color and form that abound in a world he saw divided between fantasy and truth. His paintings echoed the temperament of the time, showing first a developmental trend toward the sanction of portraiture as the genuine American art form. His then controversial painting, UNCLE TOM AND LITTLE EVA, 1853, which was inspired by the writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe, perhaps the most visible evidence he gives of pictoral sympathy of any kind for a black subject, is superimposed over a dreamland setting where nature takes precedence over the central theme of Little Eva and Uncle Tom. According to an article which appeared in the Detroit Free Press in 1853, the painting illicited caustic remarks from one writer for the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, who upon viewing the work, labelled the subject of his commentary about the painting "AN UNCLE TOMITUDE". The writer accords..."A very stupid looking creature"... to Uncle Tom and describes Little Eva in less glowing terms than those which weregiven her in [crossed-out: the] Mrs. Stowe's novel. [crossed-out: 23] 26 But Duncanson was bound to receive criticism of a more valid and objective nature as he then turned his painterly eye more succinctly to a romantic portrayal of the land he loved both real and fictional.
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[crossed-out: 23] 26 The Cincinnati Commercial Gazette quoted in The Detroit Free Press, April 21, 1853, p. 2, col. 3.