"We seldom get into trouble when we speak softly. It is only when we raise our voices that the sparks fly and tiny molehills become great mountains of contention."
Last
week I wrote about the second of the two important documentary
painters, George Catlin and Karl Bodmer, who pioneered in accurate
descriptions of the native tribes of the Missouri river basin and the
way they lived.
Much
as I admire them, my favorite painter of the place, George Caleb
Bingham, entered the scene a generation later. His focus was not on
the natives but upon the new people who were beginning to fill the
land.
Bingham
(1811-1879) is one of my three favorite American painters of the 19th
century. The other two are William Harnett and Winslow Homer. The
three are vastly different.
Bingham's
career has a parallel to that of Johannes Vermeer, the revered Dutch
artist. After his death, Vermeer disappeared from the art picture.
Two centuries passed before he was rediscovered and his genius began
to be appreciated. Bingham, too, disappeared, his work forgotten. He
was not rediscovered until the 1930s.
Bingham
was born in Augusta County, Virginia, where his father, Henry, had a
mill, 1,180 acres of land and several slaves, all given to him as a
wedding present by his father-in-law. Unfortunately, William put up
his holdings as security for a friend's
debts. When the friend died, all was lost. William moved the family
to Franklin, Missouri, for a new start.
When
George Caleb was nine, an itinerant portrait artist, Chester Harding,
stopped in Franklin looking for commissions. The boy helped Harding
at his work. This was the total extent of George Caleb's
early artistic training.
When
William died of malaria at 38, his widow opened a school for girls.
George, 12, worked as a school janitor. At 16, he apprenticed to a
cabinetmaker. When the cabinetmaker moved away, George apprenticed
to another one. Both journeymen were committed Methodists; George
preached at camp revivals and considered joining the ministry. He
also thought about becoming a lawyer.
Bingham
had a natural gift for art — and for politics. Even without
formal training, he was a skilled draftsman and a burgeoning
portraitist. By the time he was 19, he could get $20 for painting a
portrait, which he could complete in a single day.
George
married and had four children before his wife died at 29. He would
marry twice more. He lived in Arrow Rock but worked in nearby St.
Louis, where he was making a name for himself as an artist. He
became a lifelong friend with a James Rollins, a lawyer and
politician.
George
went off for three months to study in Philadelphia and visit the
National Academy of Design in New York City.
Although
self-taught, Bingham would not ever be one of those primitive
frontier artists. He had long wanted to study the old masters in the
Louvre. In 1836, he moved with his second wife to Paris to fulfill
that dream.
Their
next sojourn was in Dusseldorf, one of the most celebrated art
magnets for American art students, including Harnett. He found
himself immersed in a colony of American and German artists. The
most famous was Emanuel Leutze, whose Washington Crossing the
Delaware is one of America's
two most important patriotic paintings. Leutze went back and forth
between America and Germany.
He
and Bingham became close friends.
While
in Germany, Bingham worked on commissions from the Missouri State
Legislature.
Returning
to Missouri, George moved the family to St. Louis. In 1848, he was
elected to the Missouri General Assembly. His interest in politics
is reflected in some of his best paintings.
He
resumed painting portraits, always his bread and butter. The
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, owns 16 of
them. His Fur TradersDescending the Missouri,
painted about 1845, demonstrates that he was already more than just
a portrait painter.
What
made George Caleb Bingham great were his depictions of people doing
things, like The Country Elections, Stump Speaking, and
Verdict of the People.
Stump Speaking, 1853, St. Louis Art Museum
But
what always blows me away whenever I see them are his flatboat
paintings.
Flatboats
and keelboats became famous in American History when they were used
by Lewis and Clark to carry expedition and goods up the Missouri
River. The craft were designed to navigate shallow rivers and lakes.
They could be as much as 80 feet long and 15 feet wide.
Larger
ones were often endowed with a deck cabin. Sometimes they were
referred to as pole boats because they were propelled by raftsmen
using long poles.
Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846, St. Louis Art Museum
Lighter Relieving the Steamboat Aground, 1846 The Jolly Flatboatmen, Manoogian Collection
I
must show another. The tonality is quite different, the treatment
subtle.
Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846, Manoogian Collection.
Raftsmen Playing Cards, St. Louis Art Museum, 1847
Bingham
was always more than a painter. He was a politician. Perhaps that is
one of the reasons that his art became forgotten. During the Civil
War he was appointed State Treasurer of Missouri.
In
1874, he was appointed President of the Kansas City Board of Police,
and the next year the governor appointed him state Adjutant General.
Thereafter he was referred to as General Bingham. Even with his
political distractions, he continued to paint. His wanderings took
him to Colorado, where in 1872, he painted View of Pike's Peak.
Shortly
before his death he served briefly as the first Professor of Arts at
the University of Missouri in Columbus. The best place to see the
work of George Caleb Bingham — a lot of it — is the St.
Louis Art Museum. I’m sorry it is so far away, but as the
French say, it is worth the voyage.
Lawrence Jeppson is an art consultant, organizer and curator of art exhibitions, writer, editor
and publisher, lecturer, art historian, and appraiser. He is America's leading authority on
modern, handwoven French tapestries. He is expert on the works of William Henry Clapp, Nat
Leeb, Tsing-fang Chen, and several French artists.
He is founding president of the non-profit Mathieu Matégot Foundation for Contemporary
Tapestry, whose purview encompasses all 20th-century tapestry, an interest that traces back to
1948. For many years he represented the Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie and
Arelis in America.
Through the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the American Federation of
Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, and his own Art Circuit Services he has been a contributor to
or organizer of more than 200 art exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Taiwan.
He owns AcroEditions, which publishes and/or distributes multiple-original art. He was co-founder and artistic director of Collectors' Investment Fund.
He is the director of the Spring Arts Foundation; Utah Cultural Arts Foundation, and the Fine
Arts Legacy Foundation
Lawrence is an early-in-the-month home teacher, whose beat is by elevator. In addition, he has spent the past six years hosting and promoting reunions of the missionaries who served in the French Mission (France, Belgium, and Switzerland) during the decade after WWII.