At the start of the American Civil War, Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821–1872), born in Seneca County, New York, moved to Montreal, where he was inspired by the Canadian landscape, depicting its beauty in works such as Owl’s Head Mountain. Much admired by the Montreal art community, Duncanson set an example for Canadian painters, who began to follow him. He arrived in Canada at a formative time, when Canadian painters were asking themselves, “‘Who are we?’ and ‘Who are we going to become?’” explains Joe Ketner, curator at Boston’s Emerson College. Duncanson helped these artists find a new approach—one in which they increasingly looked for inspiration in their own country rather than in European schools of landscape painting.