Painting Populism
In 1843 artist George Caleb Bingham, 32, was cross that fame and fortune had not caught up with his ambition. However, that summer the Missourian visited Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, steeping his eye in the work of William Sidney Mount, Emanuel Leutze, John Lewis Krimmel, and other American artists painting scenes of everyday life. Bingham was turning his approach and technique in these role models’ direction when illness reminded him of life’s fragility. Recovered, encouraged, and chastened, he took a fresh creative tack.
Bingham was a roil of contradictions. His affability won him many friends, but he could be vindictive and unforgiving. He saw art that glorified the common man as his ticket to riches. He criticized politicians yet longed to be one. For much of his life, he owned slaves, but backed the Union. His Missouri River and frontier paintings are his lasting legacy, but in his lifetime, works on political themes were his main source of fame. Bingham’s American genre images of a young democracy continue to resonate.
George Caleb Bingham was born in Virginia in 1811. In 1818, after Henry and Mary Bingham lost their farm, mill, and most of their slaves, the family moved to Franklin, Missouri. Henry Bingham became an innkeeper, businessman, and judge. Malaria struck him, and by 1823 Mary was a widow raising George and six siblings operating, with George’s help, a school for girls. The works of an itinerant artist who passed through Franklin—these “limners” traveled with stocks of canvases painted with male and female figures, faces blank, which they completed—piqued the youth’s curiosity about painting, at which he showed talent.
