George Caleb Bingham was a prominent frontier artist of the mid-nineteenth century. Raised in Missouri, he apprenticed with a cabinetmaker before turning to painting in the early 1830s. Bingham worked as an itinerant portraitist in Missouri until 1838, when he traveled east to become better acquainted with art in Philadelphia and New York., During the first four years of the following decade he worked in Washington, D.C., painting portraits.
Returning to Saint Louis in 1845, he devoted himself to painting genre scenes of frontier life. These classic images of Missouri River boatmen, fur traders, and politicians established his reputation when they were shown at the annual exhibitions of the Apollo Association and its successor, the American Art-Union, and reproduced as prints made after the paintings. From 1856 to the beginning of 1859 he was in Paris and Düsseldorf, where he studied art and completed portraits of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson commissioned for the Missouri State Legislature.
After his return to Missouri Bingham again primarily painted portraits; the only notable multifigure canvas he produced was Order No. 11, 1865 - 68 (Cincinnati Art Museum) his protest of the 1863 order forcing the evacuation of Missouri citizens from the disputed Missouri-Kansas border area. He had more than an aesthetic interest in politics. Bingham actively participated in Whig conventions and held a number of elected and appointed offices, among them Missouri State treasurer, 1862-65.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Letters of George Caleb Bingham to James S. Rollins," ed. C. B. Rollins, Missouri Historical Review 32 (October 1937-July 1938): 3-34, 164-202, 340-77, 484-522; 33 (October 1938-July 1939): 45-78, 203-29, 349-84, 499-526 § John Francis McDermott, "George Caleb Bingham and the American Art-Union," New-York Historical Society Quarterly 42 (January 1958): 60-69 § E. Maurice Bloch, George Caleb Bingham, Vol. 1, The
Evolution of An Artist, Vol. 2, A Catalogue Raisonné (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), with bibliography, lists of prints after paintings, exhibitions and owners to 1879; idem, The Paintings of George Caleb Bingham: A Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986), a revised version of volume 2 of the 1967 book § Albert Christ-Janer, George Caleb Bingham: Frontier Painter of Missouri (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975), with preface by Thomas Hart Benton, chronology, bibliography § Barbara S. Groseclose, "Painting, Politics, and George Caleb Bingham," American Art Journal 10 (November 1978): 4-19.
