Navigating the West
Navigating the West

Author: Nenette Luarca-Shoaf

Publisher: Other Distribution

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780300206708

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A new look at George Caleb Bingham's iconic river paintings and his creative process in making them George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) moved to Missouri as a child and began painting the scenes of Missouri life for which he is now famous in the 1840s. Navigating the West explores how Bingham's iconic river paintings reveal the cultural and economic significance of the massive Mississippi and Missouri waterways to mid-19th-century society. Focusing on the artist's working methods and preparatory drawings, the book also explores Bingham's representations of people and places and situates these images in a dialogue with other contemporary depictions of the region. Of particular note are two landmark essays investigating Bingham's creative process through comparisons of infrared images of 17 of his paintings with both his preparatory drawings and the completed works, casting new light on his previously understudied process. Technical analysis of the artist's lauded masterpiece, Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, reveals Bingham's considerable revisions to the painting. In the concluding essay, the 20th-century revival of the artist's work is discussed within the context of American Regionalism and in light of a shifting sequence of narratives about the nation's past and future. Distributed for the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Saint Louis Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Amon Carter Museum of American Art (10/04/14-01/04/15) Saint Louis Art Museum (02/22/15-05/17/15) The Metropolitan Museum of Art (06/22/15-09/20/15)

The Painting and Politics of George Caleb Bingham
The Painting and Politics of George Caleb Bingham

Author: Nancy Rash

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780300047318

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The author views Bingham's art in the context of the political milieu in Missouri. The paintings show "other associations and deeper levels of meaning." She provides an exegesis of the paintings by the study of Bingham's politics, his speeches to legislatures, and his articles. Previous writers gave Bingham intentions that this book maintains he did not have.

But I Forget That I Am a Painter and Not a Politician
But I Forget That I Am a Painter and Not a Politician

Author: George Caleb Bingham

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 9780981693927

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George Caleb Bingham, who earned the sobriquet of "the Missouri artist," evolved from a locally known portrait painter to an artist of national renown. His letters illuminate the complex personality of a man actively involved in the political, social, and cultural life of nineteenth-century America -- an eyewitness to westward expansion, a firsthand observer of river and rail commerce, and a participant in the Civil War. [...] In a fascinating introduction, Joan Stack summarizes Bingham's artistic career. She focuses on the artist's efforts to market himself as a "western" painter and finds that much of his national reputation in the nineteenth century derived from the genre and political paintings of the 1840s and 1850s, particularly those from which prints were made and widely distributed. Readers interested in nineteenth-century Missouri will find these letters from the pen of an artist who maintained a keen connection to the political affairs of his time truly engaging.

American Genre Painting
American Genre Painting

Author: Elizabeth Johns

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1991-01-01

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780300057546

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American genre painting flourished in the thirty years before the Civil War, a period of rapid social change that followed the election of President Andrew Jackson. It has long been assumed that these paintings--of farmers, western boatmen and trappers, blacks both slave and free, middle-class women, urban urchins, and other everyday folk--served as records of an innocent age, reflecting a Jacksonian optimism and faith in the common man. In this enlightening book Elizabeth Johns presents a different interpretation--arguing that genre paintings had a social function that related in a more significant and less idealistic way to the political and cultural life of the time. Analyzing works by William Sidney Mount, George Caleb Bingham, David Gilmore Blythe, Lilly Martin Spencer, and others, Johns reveals the humor and cynicism in the paintings and places them in the context of stories about the American character that appeared in sources ranging from almanacs and newspapers to joke books and political caricature. She compares the productions of American painters with those of earlier Dutch, English, and French genre artists, showing the distinctive interests of American viewers. Arguing that art is socially constructed to meet the interests of its patrons and viewers, she demonstrates that the audience for American genre paintings consisted of New Yorkers with a highly developed ambition for political and social leadership, who enjoyed setting up citizens of the new democracy as targets of satire or condescension to satisfy their need for superiority. It was this network of social hierarchies and prejudices--and not a blissful celebration of American democracy--that informed the look and the richly ambiguous content of genre painting.

Picturing a Nation
Picturing a Nation

Author: David M. Lubin

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1994-01-01

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9780300057324

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Art historian David Lubin examines the work of six nineteenth-century American artists to show how their paintings both embraced and resisted dominant social values. Lubin argues that artists such as George Bingham and Lily Martin Spencer were aware of the underlying social conflicts of their time and that their work reflected the nation's ambivalence toward domesticity, its conflicting ideas about child rearing, its racial disharmony, and many other issues central to the formation of modern America.--From publisher description.

American Painting of the Nineteenth Century
American Painting of the Nineteenth Century

Author: Barbara Novak

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-01-12

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0198042256

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In this distinguished work, which Hilton Kramer in The New York Times Book Review called "surely the best book ever written on the subject," Barbara Novak illuminates what is essentially American about American art. She highlights not only those aspects that appear indigenously in our art works, but also those features that consistently reappear over time. Novak examines the paintings of Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Fitz H. Lane, William Sidney Mount, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. She draws provocative and original conclusions about the role in American art of spiritualism and mathematics, conceptualism and the object, and Transcendentalism and the fact. She analyzes not only the paintings but nineteenth-century aesthetics as well, achieving a unique synthesis of art and literature. Now available with a new preface and an updated bibliography, this lavishly illustrated volume--featuring more than one hundred black-and-white illustrations and sixteen full-color plates--remains one of the seminal works in American art history.

George Caleb Bingham
George Caleb Bingham

Author: Fern Helen Rusk

Publisher: Legare Street Press

Published: 2023-07-18

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781019406380

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Art lovers won't want to miss this in-depth look at the life and work of George Caleb Bingham, a beloved Missouri artist who was known for his depictions of American life in the 19th century. Readers will be inspired by Bingham's unique style and his passion for capturing the essence of everyday life on canvas. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

George Caleb Bingham
George Caleb Bingham

Author: Paul C. Nagel

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2005-06-01

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0826264638

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In this fascinating work, Paul Nagel tells the full story of George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879), one of America’s greatest nineteenth-century painters. While Nagel assesses Bingham’s artistic achievements, he also portrays another very important part of the artist’s career—his service as a statesman and political leader in Missouri. Until now, Bingham’s public service has been largely forgotten, overshadowed by his triumph as a great artist. Yet Nagel finds there were times when Bingham yearned more to be a successful politician than to be a distinguished painter. Born in Virginia, Bingham moved with his family to Missouri when he was eight years old. He spent his youth in Arrow Rock, Missouri, and returned there as an adult. He also kept art studios in Columbia and St. Louis. In his last years, he served as the first professor of art at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Because of his ties to the state, he was known nationally as “the Missouri artist.” Bingham began his distinguished public service to Missouri as a member of the legislature. During the Civil War, he grew even more politically involved, holding the office of state treasurer, and he remained active throughout the period of Reconstruction. From 1875 to 1877, Bingham served as Missouri’s adjutant general, with most of that time spent in Washington, D. C., where he attempted to settle Missourians’ war claims against the federal government. Contrary to the idyllic scenes portrayed in most of his paintings, Bingham’s life ranged from moments of high achievement to times of intense distress and humiliation. His career was often touched by controversy, sorrow, and frustration. Personal letters and other manuscripts reveal Bingham’s life to be quite complicated, and Paul Nagel attempts to uncover the truth in this biography. Beautifully illustrated, this book includes a magnificent landscape entitled Horse Thief, which had been missing since Bingham painted it sometime around 1852. Recently discovered by art historian Fred R. Kline, this splendid work will appear in print for the first time. Anyone who has an interest in art, Missouri history, or politics will find this new book extremely valuable.