George Caleb Bingham (March 20, 1811 – July 7, 1879) is recognized as one of the most important American artists of the 19th century. Known in his lifetime as “the Missouri artist,” he is distinguished among the first generation of painters of the early American West for classic narrative scenes drawn from his observation and experience.
His most famous paintings chronicle America’s westward expansion and depict life along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Rendered in the style of “genre painting,” Bingham’s works capture the unique aspects of the American frontier with themes of community engagement, leisure, and river life before the steamboat era. His Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) is a renowned example of Bingham’s genre paintings, containing a colorful cast of characters and scenes imbued with layers of symbolism and socio-political commentary.
Today, Bingham’s paintings portraying fur trappers, riverboat men, fishermen, politicians and frontier settlers are considered national treasures and can be viewed as vivid historical records of the politics, commerce and social relations of everyday life of the American frontier. His paintings are held in important private and museum collections, notably: National Gallery of Art; National Portrait Gallery; Wadsworth Atheneum; Amon Carter Museum of American Art; Saint Louis Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Brooklyn Museum; and The White House. He was also a prolific portrait artist, producing as many as 500 portraits depicting numerous pioneering Missourians, important politicians from the state, as well as famous figures such as John Quincy Adams, the sixth US president who served from 1825 to 1829, and Senator Daniel Webster.
All of Bingham’s known paintings, including recently discovered works, are compiled in the George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné, a public-access electronic catalogue launched in 2018 that builds on the work of 20th century American art scholar E. Maurice Bloch (1916 -1989). In 1986 Bloch published The Paintings of George Caleb Bingham: A Catalogue Raisonné
Early life and education Born on a farm in Augusta County, Virginia,Who Was Who in America, Historical Volume, 1607–1896 (Marquis Who's Who, 1967). George Caleb Bingham was the second of seven children that Mary Amend (1789–1851) bore with her husband Henry Vest Bingham (1784–1823). Upon their marriage, Mary's father Matthias Amend gave the Binghams ownership of the family mill, land, and several slaves with the agreement that Matthias could live with the family for the rest of his life. Henry Bingham offered the land and mill as surety for a friend's debt and, when the friend died in 1818, all was lost.1810 U.S. Federal Census for Rockingham County, Virginia (adjacent to Augusta County) shows Henry Bingham as owning 6 slaves In 1819, the Bingham family (including grandfather Amend) moved to Franklin, Missouri, on the Missouri River near the state's center as well as the eastern terminus of the Santa Fe Trail, "where the land was said to be bountiful, fertile and cheap."Nagel, Paul C., "The Man and His Times," in George Caleb Bingham, ed. Michael Edward Shapiro (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990).
Bingham was eight years old when he moved to Missouri with his parents, and grew up around Franklin, Arrow Rock and Boonville. He was initially educated by his mother, and mostly self-taught as an artist. When he was nine, he met the artist Chester Harding (1792-1866). The young Bingham, who had already shown an interest in sketching and drawing and had received some art tutoring from a local teacher , was assigned to assist Harding, who was seeking new portrait commissions and had recently finished one of Daniel Boone. Harding provided young Bingham with paints and brushes and encouraged him to continue painting on his own. The experience left a lasting impression on him.
On December 23, 1823, Bingham's father Henry, who had initially opened a tavern in Franklin and in 1821 become the judge of the Howard County Court, died of malaria at the age of thirty-eight. His investment in a tobacco venture had failed, and debts forced the sale of the home in Franklin. The young sons barely kept their small farm in nearby Saline County afloat, in part with the help of their father's brother John, who had moved to the area and donated half the land which became Arrow Rock.Missouri cyclopedia Mary Bingham opened a school for girls on the farmstead. George, then twelve, worked as the school janitor, and later received some art tutoring when the school hired Mattie Wood as an art teacher.
At age sixteen, the young Bingham was apprenticed to cabinet maker Jesse Green in nearby Boonville in Cooper County. After Green moved away (a major flood of the Missouri River having destroyed much of Franklin and other riverside towns in 1827), Bingham apprenticed with another cabinet maker, Justinian Williams. Both tradesmen were Methodist ministers. While under their tutelage, Bingham studied religious texts, preached at camp meetings and thought about becoming a minister in his Baptist Church (in which he would remain active throughout his life). He also considered becoming a lawyer.
When Harding and Bingham met again 10 years later, Bingham was struggling with various career directions in carpentry, religion and the law. Harding, assessing Bingham’s artistic talent, advised him to begin a professional career as a portrait painter on a commission basis. Bingham followed that advice, and he supported himself for most of his career as a portrait artist. His success also provided him with enough money for travels to New York, Philadelphia and other major cities, including in Europe, in pursuit of commissions, broader exposure to the art world, and formal art education.
Artistic development and career By age nineteen, Bingham was painting portraits for $20.00 apiece, often completing the works in a single day. He found clients in Howard and Saline counties and nearby areas. Though his painting abilities were still developing, he impressed his patrons by strong draftsmanship as well as his native ability to capture his subject's likeness, and he was able to support himself by this work by 1833.
By 1838, he had established a studio in St. Louis and was beginning to make a name for himself as a portrait artist. His clients included prominent local citizens, including the lawyer, James S. Rollins of Columbia, Missouri, who would become Bingham’s lifelong friend as well as an important politician in the state. He also painted Rollins’ 10-year-old sister, Portrait of Sarah Helen Rollins, his first full-length portrait that is now a classic model of a frontier girl dressed in her Sunday best.
Bingham then decided to try formal education in the east, and moved with his young wife to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he spent three years studying art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, including a trip to New York City to visit the National Academy of Design exhibition.Missouri CyclopediaChrist-Janer, Albert, George Caleb Bingham: Frontier Painter of Missouri, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1975 Bingham then spent nearly five years in Washington, D.C., where he painted portraits of various politicians, including John Quincy Adams
Upon his return home to Missouri in 1845, Bingham began to paint his best-known works of narrative scenes drawn from everyday life along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, capturing the frontier world of a burgeoning young America—workers, traders and fisherman, settlers, townspeople, merchants and government officials.
In 1846, he painted the first of his iconic riverboat men scenes, The Jolly Boatman (National Gallery of Art), capturing a moment of leisure for the crew of a cargo raft, featuring a central figure dancing exuberantly to a fiddle. An engraving of the painting was widely distributed by the American Art Union based in New York and helped establish Bingham’s reputation. The art union would purchase and distribute prints of An engraving of the painting was widely distributed by the American Art Union based in New York and helped establish Bingham’s reputation. The art union would purchase and distribute seven more prints of his paintings in the next seven years.seven more paintings in the next seven years.
Marriage and family
In 1836, the year Missouri expanded with the Platte Purchase of former Native American territory (thus violating the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which had led to the state's creation), 25-year-old Bingham married 18-year-old Sarah Elizabeth Hutchison (1818–1848), who bore him four children before her death. From 1837 to 1845 they lived in Arrow Rock in Saline County, where their house has been designated a National Historic Landmark. She died in 1848 at the age of twenty-nine. Bingham's mother Mary helped him raise his children before she died in 1851.
Bingham married twice more, first to Eliza K. Thomas. After several years, she was confined to a mental asylum, where she died in 1876. He next married the widow Martha Lykins, a Kansas City community activist respected for her work among orphans (despite her Confederate activism years earlier), but their marriage lasted less than a year before Bingham died (Martha Lykins Bingham died in 1890).
Bingham ran for election as a Whig to the Missouri House of Representatives the following year. He appeared to have won in 1846 by 3 votes, but lost in a recount. In a reprise of the election in 1848, Bingham won the seat by a decisive margin, becoming one of the few artists to serve in elected political office. He actively opposed the pro-slavery "Jackson resolutions" in 1849, although their proponent was also a resident of Saline County. He would also represent Missouri's eighth district at the Whig National Convention in June 1852. Bingham's political interests would be reflected in his vivid paintings of frontier political life.Rash, Nancy, The Painting And Politics of George Caleb Bingham (Yale University Press, 1991).
Europe In 1856, two years after the tumultuous creation of the Kansas Territory, Bingham traveled to Europe for an extensive tour with his second wife Eliza and youngest daughter. First they stayed in Paris for several months, where Bingham fulfilled a long-cherished desire and studied the Old Masters at the Louvre Museum, likely his chief reason for going abroad. They went on to Düsseldorf, Germany, where they lived until 1859, taking part in the Düsseldorf school of painting. Bingham lived and worked among the American and German artists of the art colony, among whom was the German-American Emanuel Leutze, the most prominent historical painter in the United States. (Washington Crossing the Delaware was then his most famous work.) Leutze was unusual for living in both countries and had an open studio in Düsseldorf, where he welcomed Bingham as a friend and already successful artist. While in Germany, Bingham worked on important commissions from the Missouri State Legislature of Presidents Washington and Jefferson (later destroyed by fire), as well as independent paintings.
American Civil War