Landscape with Rainbow (Duncanson)

The Hudson River School landscape painting was completed in 1859, while Duncanson was living in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Two years after Landscape with Rainbow, Duncanson completed his largest work, The Land of the Lotus Eaters in 1861, inspired by the similarly-named 1832 poem of Alfred Tennyson and by Frederic Church's 1859 painting Heart of the Andes.

Duncanson became uncomfortable in Cincinnati as the American Civil War progressed, due to the proximity of Covington in the slave-owning border state of Kentucky across the Ohio River.

It portrays a bucolic pastoral landscape which resembles the Ohio River around Cincinnati and Covington, illuminated by the setting sun.

It was loaned to the United States Capitol for display for the occasion and was returned to the Smithsonian American Art Museum after the event.