Keeping It Real

OR THE FIRST time in a generation, the American artist Frank Duveneck (1848–1919) is getting a comprehensive museum exhibition. The Cincinnati Art Museum, in Duveneck’s home city, is mounting “Frank Duveneck: American Master,” from December 18, 2020, through March 28, 2021. More than 125 works will be on view, 90 of them from the museum’s own collection, which is the largest trove of Duvenecks in the world. This broad selection, plus the accompanying catalogue, will give viewers what they need to appreciate and assess the work of this influential but now relatively little-known painter and printmaker. Duveneck’s trademark brushy style, dark palette, and innovative subject matter including gritty everyday-life studies, and Orientalism marked an