Struggles many and great: James P. Ball, Robert Duncanson, and other artists of color in antebellum Cincinnati

Joseph D. Ketner II Art

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, November/December 2011 In 1854 Gleason’s Pictorial, the popular, nationally circulated magazine out of Boston, published an article promoting the lavish “Daguerrian Gallery” es­tablished in Cincinnati by James P. Ball (Fig. 6), lauding his im­ages as “unsurpassed by any in the Union.”1 In fact, Ball’s Gallery (see Figs. 2, 4) was not so un­usual. Mathew Brady’s popular …