When Virginia-born George Caleb Bingham was seven, his father lost most of the family’s fortune, and they moved to Missouri to build a new life, settling first in Franklin, on the banks of the Missouri River, and later on a farm in Saline County. Who knows what would have caught his imagination had Bingham stayed in Virginia, but there is no question that life on and near the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers as the nation moved westward brought him lasting fame as a painter, providing him with subject matter that satisfied both his artistic aims and his belief in democracy. For the first time, Bingham’s river pictures are being examined in depth in an exhibition organized by the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, where it opens on October 2.
Above: The Wood-Boat by George Caleb Bingham 91811 – 1879), 1850. Saint Louis Art Museum.
At a time when images of the West proliferated–in paintings, prints, maps, magazine illustrations, and moving panoramas–Bingham drew from historical and contemporary European and American sources to create pictures that appealed to a range of viewers, regardless of their geographical locale or urban or rural background. He saw the great western rivers as vital to the success of American commerce and national unity and the men who plied them as exemplars of America’s future-a contrast to the vision of the unruly frontier that often made its way east. As Nenette Luarca-Shoaf writes in her essay in the exhibition catalogue, “By emphasizing a sense of the everyday over the sensational, Bingham’s paintings counter existing stereotypes and assert a local’s perspective, thereby bringing new facets of western identity to the fore.”
In addition to twenty-one paintings, the show includes numerous preparatory drawings, and the catalogue explores the ways Bingham used these drawings in composing his canvases. After closing in Fort Worth, the show will travel to the SaintLouis Art Museum (February 22 to May 17, 2015) and then to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (June 16 to September 20, 2015).
Navigating the West: George Caleb Bingham and the River • Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas • October 2 to January 18, 2015 • cartermuseum.org
