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Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845)

George Caleb Bingham American Realist Painter 1811-1879. Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845).

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Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845)

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  1. George Caleb Bingham American Realist Painter 1811-1879 Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845)

  2. Born in Virginia, Bingham moved when he was still a child with his family to Missouri, where he spent most of his life. Although he painted portraits as well as genre subjects, he is best known for his depictions of the boatmen who plied the Mississippi & Missouri rivers around St. Louis.

  3. The Jolly Flatboatmen (1846)

  4. At the age of 16, Bingham was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker in Columbia, Missouri, an occupation that led to sign painting. By the time he was 22, he was traveling up & down the river, painting portraits in a vigorously drawn & linear style. • In his genre pictures of river life, we see only male figures. They are never at work, but dance, make music, play cards, fish, or hold conversations. Never disturbed by the presence of women, they relax against generalized river backgrounds that recede mistily & glow smokily in the distance.

  5. He laid out his compositions carefully & drew his figures from life, realistically & often humorously, using friends for models. His finest work, done between 1845 & 1855 when he painted the people and country he loved best, is fresh & vigorous, truthful & enthusiastic.

  6. Raftsmen Playing Cards (1847)

  7. Jolly Flatboatmen in Port (1857)

  8. On 21 August 1863, Confederate William Quantrill and his Quantrill Raiders carried out one of the worst atrocities of the Civil War, attacking the town of Lawrence, killing 150 inhabitants, & destroying over 180 buildings. • Union General Thomas Ewing was furious. He issued Order No. 11, an eviction notice to all people in the four-county area who could not prove their loyalty to the Union cause. Ewing's decree virtually decimated the region. • A Union soldier, Bingham was appalled by the consequences of Order No. 11 & wrote to General Ewing: “If you execute this order, I shall make you infamous with pen and brush." In 1868 Bingham painted Order No. 11, depicting Ewing's crime.

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