 All right, gather up where you can see this painting. I'm covering up the label on purpose. I want you to look before we get any sort of background information. What's the whole picture about? I'm looking for what's underneath the rainbow. OK, what is underneath the rainbow? It's like a hole. OK, so you notice this tiny little house. Sometimes that takes a while to see. And that's at the foot of the rainbow. So what's that about? Why did the artist do that? Well, Homestead, it's like, yeah, it's a big American Have your own land, have your own house, and not be subject to any bad deeds. Yeah. Fantastic. So that's the American dream. Have your own spot surrounded by land. OK. What else do you notice? We've used the word beauty, paradise. How else would you describe this particular landscape? Vast? Great one. Open. You've got to have a little cell that I'm showing you. It's not totally alone, but it's pretty common. Right, you're not totally alone, but you don't have right next to your neighbors to deal with. OK. The house is really small. It is really hard to see. What does the artist do to make sure your eye goes there eventually? How does he point it out? Right, it's right at the end of the rainbow. But that really wasn't enough for him. How else does your eye go there? You've got this lot coming from here, too. That angles that. I have, we have what coming up? This is like a road. Right here. This comes out to get a lot of water. Absolutely. A lot of water. Looks like he's pointing it. He also goes, yeah, pulling in the adoration also. And along the riverbank here. Fantastic. So there are all these lines, this little drop of light leading up here in the water and the path they're pointing. So right. So that really lets you know this is kind of the main subject of the story. It's kind of an American dream. The Taiba was landscape with rainbow. It was painted in 1859. And the artist is Robert Duncanson. Robert Scott Duncanson. So if this is painted in 1859, why would you choose this subject in about that time in American history? Let's consider, first of all, what's going on in the country? People are beginning to go west also, you know. OK. And the country is the American dream more with all the politics going on is some ways disappearing. OK. So the American dream, this idea has come up several times. So that's really maybe being challenged. Is that what you're saying? I'm saying with the conflict, the regional conflict, some of the ideals of America are in question. OK. The other thing to add that isn't on this label, but it is available on our website in the biography of the artist is that this artist is African-American. Does that change the painting for you at all? OK, I'm hearing, oh, oh, interesting. Going north of the Promised Land. So it's not just American dream, it's not a Promised Land. Yeah, but then why would you point to white people? Ah. Because dominant culture. He's hiding behind his work. His work's not going to be respected. He's an African-American. So he paints white people on it because that's a white man's going to look at a painting with white people on it. He's not going to look at a painting if there's a white man. It's going to change the meaning. Everything of contemporary viewers, right? It's going to change the meaning. Duncanson was funded by abolitionists. And their goal was to show how ridiculous this idea that a race was lesser by showing how skilled an African-American artist could be. So he's showing off technical skill, as well as maybe this dream, this kind of American dream on the eve of the Civil War. There are kind of three eras of African-American art. Everything before the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s is kind of what you see here of trying to say, we're just as good. This is ridiculous. We can do everything that you can do. It's not until the Harlem Renaissance that it's saying, we don't have to show your world. We can show our own.