This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Born in Augusta County, Virginia in the Shenandoah River Valley, George
Caleb Bingham became known for classically rendered western genre,
especially Missouri and Mississippi River scenes of boatmen bringing
cargo to the American West and politicians seeking to influence
frontier life. One of his most famous river genre paintings was The Jolly Flatboatmen"
completed in several versions in 1846. Fame resulted for this
work when it was exhibited in New York at the American Art Union whose
organizers made an engraving of 10,000 copies and distributed it to all
of their members. Paintings such as Country Politician (1849) and County Election (1852) and Stump Speaking (1854) reflected Bingham's political interests.
In
1819, as an eight-year old, he moved to Boon's Lick, Missouri with his
parents and grandfather who had been farmers and inn keepers in the
Shenandoah Valley near Rockingham, Virginia. Reportedly as a
child there, he took every opportunity to escape supervision to travel
the River and watch the marine activity.
His father died in
1827, when his son was sixteen years old. His mother had
encouraged his art talent, but art lessons were not easily
obtainable. In order to earn money, he apprenticed to a cabinet
maker but determined to become an artist. By 1835, he had a
modest reputation as a frontier painter and successfully charged twenty
dollars per portrait in St. Louis. "His portraits had become
standard decorations in prosperous Missouri homes." (Samuels 46).
In 1836, he moved to Natchez, Mississippi and there had the same kind
of career, only was able to charge forty dollars per portrait.
He
remained largely self taught until 1837, when he, age 26 and using the
proceeds from his portraiture, studied several months at the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He later said that he
learned much of his atmospheric style and classically balanced
composition by copying paintings in collections in St. Louis and
Philadelphia and that among his most admired painters were Thomas Cole,
John Vanderlyn, and William Sidney Mount. Between 1856 and 1859,
Bingham traveled back and forth to Dusseldorf, Germany, where he
studied the work of genre painters. Some critics think these influences
were negative on his work because during that time period, he abandoned
his luminist style that had brought him so much public affirmation.
Bingham
credited Chester Harding (1792-1866) as being the earliest and one of
the most lasting influences on his work. Harding,a leading
portraitists when Bingham was a young man, had a studio in Franklin,
near Bingham's home town. In 1822, when Bingham was ten years
old, he watched Harding finish a portrait of Daniel Boone.
Bingham recalled that watching Harding with the Boone portrait was a
lasting inspiration and that it was the first time he had ever seen a
painting in progress. Harding suggested to Bingham that he begin
doing portraiture by finding subjects in the river men, which, of
course, opened the subject matter that established fame and financial
success for Bingham. Harding also encouraged Bingham to copy with
paint engravings. He later painted two portraits of Boone but,
contrary to the assertions of some scholars, he did not do Boone
portraits in the company of Harding.
Bingham's portraits of
Boone are not located, but one of them, a wood signboard for a hotel in
Boonville circa 1828 to 1830, showed a likeness of Boone in buckskin
dress with his gun and inscription "Daniel Boone/Liberty". It is
possible this image was based on an engraving by James Otto Lewis after
a design by Chester Harding published in St. Louis in 1820 (Bloch) and
that this similarity accounts for the stories that Bingham and Harding
painted together.
From 1840 to 1844, Bingham was based in
Washington DC where he painted portraits of prominent citizens, but he
failed to achieve much recognition until he returned to Missouri in
1844 and began painting river genre works from a studio in St.
Louis. Among the first notable paintings of his signature subject
was Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845).
At the
same time, Bingham was creative artistically, he was running for state
office. He was a member of the Whig party, founded in 1834 as a
coalition opposed to Andrew Jackson, who was then U.S. President.
Bingham's close friend and influential Missouri Whig, James Sidney
Rollins, drew him into politics, and Bingham gave speeches for
presidential candidate William Henry Harrison. In 1846, Bingham
was elected to the state legislature, but the election was contested
and Bingham lost the office. In 1862, he was elected state treasurer
and in 1875, Adjutant General. Two years later, he accepted a
professorship at the University of Missouri at Columbia, a position he
held for only two years because he died in 1879.
However, during
these last years, he had done some traveling to Europe and in 1872
visited Colorado, where he did a painting of Pike's Peak, View of Pike's Peak, now in the Amon Carter Museum. In 1878, he returned to Colorado.
"Bingham
was described as small and delicate but dynamic, an excellent
conversationalist married three times (Samuels 46). He always
wore a wig because he had "contracted smallpox at age 24 in 1834-35 and
lost his hair. Thereafter he wore a wig, which is first seen in
his earliest known self portrait." (Bloch/Kline)
Sources:
Michael David Zellman, "300 Years of American Art"
E Maurice Bloch, Catalogue Raisonne of George Caleb Bingham.
Citing Bloch as a reference, Fred R. Kline, fine-art professional of
Santa Fe, New Mexico submitted the information regarding Bingham and
Daniel Boone portraits and smallpox.
Peter Falk, Who Was Who in American Art
Peggy and Harold Samuels, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West |
Biography from Fred R. Kline Gallery, Inc.:
|  "George Caleb Bingham: Artist of Missouri and the American Frontier"
Abridged Version Copyright 2005 by Fred R. Kline, Kline Art Research
Associates & Fred R. Kline Gallery.
George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) is renowned today as one of the
classic artists of the American West. His paintings rank among the
nation’s greatest art treasures. Bingham can lay claim to being the
first outstanding American artist from the “West”. He is best known for
his genre scenes derived from the daily life of what was then the
Western frontier. Only five years before Bingham was born, Lewis and
Clark and the Corps of Discovery had returned from their 1804-06
westward exploration. In 1820, when Bingham was nine, Missouri became
the 24th state. Bingham’s paintings from 1845-55—the decade of his best
work—generally relate to life and commerce along the Mississippi and
Missouri rivers, and to the American scene involving the people of
Missouri in and around St. Louis, Columbia, Jefferson City, Arrow Rock,
Boonville, and Kansas City.
His genre paintings—narratives of everyday life—depicted and
immortalized the common man: Fur traders and riverboatmen and settlers
in scenes of frontier life (which he knew from both tradition and first
hand observation); and scenes of the young nation’s democratic process:
Political campaigning and elections (which he knew from his deep
involvement with the Whig party, with Missouri state politics and
national politics, and as a seeker and achiever of political office).
Further enhancing Bingham’s body of work is portraiture and landscape
painting. His portraits—representing a lifelong pursuit of commissioned
work—for the most part depict prominent 19th century Missourians and
provide a singular historical resource. Bingham’s landscapes were at
first created as background scenes for his portraits and then fashioned
as settings for his genre paintings; however, his landscapes evolved
into a large body of work (many are still unlocated) and cover the
entire range of style then current in American landscape painting.
During a career of 45 years, from 1834 onward, Bingham was increasingly
singled out as “The Missouri Artist” and he could in fact be considered
the state’s first artist. In Missouri his artistic talent, initially as
a portraitist, was highly regarded from the beginning of his career, a
rare and encouraging position for any artist, and especially for
Bingham who was self taught and self supporting and without academic or
artistic connections. In an 1837 letter to James Rollins, Bingham wrote
his credo at the beginning of his career: “There is no honorable
sacrifice which I would not make to attain eminence in the art of which
I have devoted myself.”
Today his childhood home in Arrow Rock, Missouri is a National Historic
Landmark and his paintings now hang as national treasures in museums
across the United States, iconic images of 19th-century frontier life.
Bingham always believed in his own greatness as an artist and against
all odds his life became a hero’s journey toward that ultimately gained
eminence he sought.
The year 2011 will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of George
Caleb Bingham, now recognized as an “Old Master” of American Art.
Bibliography.
Standard References by E. Maurice Bloch:
E. Maurice Bloch, The Paintings of George Caleb Bingham: A Catalogue Raisonne. University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1986.
Bloch--George Caleb Bingham: The Evolution of an Artist Bloch & George Caleb Bingham: A Catalogue Raisonne (companion volumes). University of California Press, 1967.
Bloch--The Drawings of George Caleb Bingham With a Catalogue Raisonne. University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1975.
Selected Sources (chronologically, beginning with the latest)
Paul C. Nagel. George Caleb Bingham, Missouri’s Famed Painter and Forgotten Politician. University of Missouri Press, Columbia, (April) 2005.
Michael Edward Shapiro. George Caleb Bingham. Abrams, NY, 1993.
Nancy Rash. The Paintings and Politics of George Caleb Bingham. Yale U Press, New Haven, 1991.
George Caleb Bingham, Exhibition Catalogue with essays by Paul C.
Nagel, Barbara Groseclose, Elizabeth Johns, Michael Edward Shapiro, and
John Wilmerding. St. Louis Art Museum/National Gallery of Art. Abrams,
NY, 1990.
Ron Tyler. George Caleb Bingham, The Native Artist. American Frontier Life: Early Western Paintings and Prints. Abbeville, NY, 1987.
Matthew Baigell. “George Caleb Bingham”. Dictionary of American Art. Harper & Row, NY, 1979.
Albert Christ-Janer. George Caleb Bingham, Frontier Painter of Missouri. Abrams, NY, 1975.
Barbara Novak. “George Caleb Bingham, Missouri Classicism”. American Painting of the Nineteenth Century. Prager, NY, 1969.
John Francis McDermott. George Caleb Bingham, River Portraitist. U of OK Press, Norman, 1959. |
Biography from Altermann Galleries and Auctioneers, I:
| George Caleb Bingham
Born: Plantation in Augusta County, Virgina 1811
Died: Kansas City, Missouri 1879
Bingham’s family moved to frontier Missouri at Boon’s Lick in 1819. After his father died in 1827, he was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker but resolved to become an artist. He followed the advice of the painter Chester Harding to teach himself to paint by copying engravings with homemade pigments. By 1835, he was recognized as an able frontier painter, charging $20 per portrait in St. Louis. In 1836, he moved to Natchez where he charged $40. His portraits had become standard decorations in prosperous Missouri homes. He was able to afford three months at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1837, observing genre as well as portrait painting. From 1838 to 1840, he sent paintings for exhibition in New York City. In 1841 he went to Washington, DC to paint portraits of leading politicians.
In St. Louis in 1845 he finished The Jolly Flatboatmen that was immediately popular in the form of an American Art Union engraving. This was followed by Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, Raftmen Playing Cards, and Lighter Relieving a Steamboat Aground. Bingham entered politics in 1848, an interest that provided Stump Speaking and the Verdict of the People. A series of government jobs and European travel left less time for painting, but in 1872 he visited Colorado and thereafter painted the View of Pikes Peak that is in the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art collection. Bingham was described as small and delicate but dynamic, an excellent conversationalist married three times, and always wigged to cover baldness from measles at 19.
Resource: SAMUELS’ Encyclopedia of ARTISTS of THE AMERICAN WEST,
Peggy and Harold Samuels, 1985, Castle Publishing
|
Biography from William A. Karges Fine Art - Beverly Hills:
| Born in Virginia and raised in Missouri, and with only brief art instruction, George Caleb Bingham built a strong reputation for himself as a classical portraitist while still in his early 20’s. Encouraged by his success, Bingham sought more formal art instruction at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1837.
Bingham continued painting portraits in Washington D.C. in the 1840’s, before eventually winning praise for his primary love, painting the genre scenes of the low-lying river areas, with all their atmospheric effect.
Also devoted to politics, Bingham was once elected to the Missouri State Legislature, but his win was overturned when the election was contested. |
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