James D. Duncan, born 1806 in Coleraine in Northern Ireland. At the age of 19, he followed some drawing lessons. He immigrated to Lower Canada in 1830 from where he established himself as a professional artist and professor of drawings in Montreal. Along with his career as an artist, he was a lieutenant in the light infantry regiment during the rebellion of 1837.
Duncan's works are mainly watercolors depicting Montreal life, landscapes and genre scenes. In 1848, James Duncan traveled to Niagara and London Canada in search of new landscapes. For all of his works, Duncan will not stray from the traditional British watercolor technique. He was commissioned in 1831 by Jacques Viger to paint a series of views of Montreal in watercolor.
Duncan will be recognized for his numerous illustrations of publications in magazines such as Canadian Illustrated News, the Illustrated London News and the Hochelaga Depicta, a guide to Montreal published between 1839 and 1846. In 1847, he became a founding member of the Montreal Society of Artists alongside Cornelius Krieghoff.
In addition to his watercolors, we know only a few oil works by the painter depicting views of Montreal. In the 1850s, he painted portraits including a series of historical figures from Canada still commissioned by Jacques Viger.
James Duncan will also become the first artisan of lithography in Canada by publishing six views of Montreal engraved by W.S. Barnard and published in 1849 in Montreal. A few years later in 1864, he became involved in the flourishing Duncan and Company, "lithographic printers and engravers and draftsmen". He exhibited several of these works in subsequent years in London, Montreal and at the Royal Academy of Canada. At the very end of his life, he returned to the United Kingdom to acquire several works of art for Montreal collectors, including Georges Alexander Drummond.
He died in 1881.
