Artist: George Caleb Bingham Place/date of birth: Augusta County, Virginia 1811 Place/date of death: Kansas City, Missouri 1879 Title: Boatmen on the Missouri Date of completion: 1846 Materials: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 25 x 30 inches Collection: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Accession number: 1979.7.15 Introduction With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the size of the United States doubled, and a new American frontier was established. It was the spirit of these newly settled lands that was captured in the genre scenes of George Caleb Bingham, who grew up in Missouri soon after that territory was added to the nation. Genre painting, which takes for its subjects scenes of everyday life, was popular in the United States from 1830 to 1880, a period in which the rapidly expanding country saw a divergence of lifestyles. Genre paintings such as Boatmen on the Missouri offered Americans a window into the lives of others and represented a distinctly new American appreciation for the common worker. Discussion By 1835, steamboats were a primary means of moving goods and people throughout the river systems. This was especially true in the South where cold weather and ice did not interfere with traffic. Here we see flatboatmen, workers who made their living selling split logs to steamboats traveling the rivers. The advent of steamboats made this trade crucial in three important ways: Looking Closely Boatmen were familiar subjects in American culture, well-known through narrative songs and literature. The popular mythology of the period considered flatboatmen to be unsavory, disreputable characters who lived outside the social order, but Bingham's men have none of these stereotypical qualities. The men sit upright, bathed in a brilliant light. They look directly at the viewer as equals. They are, however, not "average Americans." Their clothing, while not undignified, is a bit rough and tattered. Their broad shoulders and enormous arms suggest the hard physical labor of their daily work. Historians interpret Boatmen on the Missouri in a variety of ways: Whatever the case, these working men in the painting are certainly romanticized. Their clothes are crude but clean, and their poses reveal their confidence and character; the artist has depicted the laborers in a noble and dignified manner. Style Bingham has produced a balanced composition by utilizing the shape of the triangle. The seeming immobility of the raft is underlined by the dark reflections that pin it into place at the bottom of the canvas. The two oars that extend beyond the sides of the picture further halt the motion. In contrast to the muted colors of the landscape, Bingham has thrown a sharp light on the three flatboatmen, using strong colors to bring them forward and make them stand out from the scenery behind them. Artist George Caleb Bingham was born in Virginia in 1811. As a young boy he moved with his family to what was then the new territory of Missouri. He grew up in a town along the banks of the Missouri River, where he began his career as a self-taught portraitist. Bingham always styled himself as a frontier person, although he lived in Washington, D.C. in the early 1840s and traveled in the northeastern United States during this time. His fame as an artist was spread in part by his association with the American Art Union which exhibited his pictures and distributed them in lotteries. His painting The Jolly Flatboatmen, which is similar to Boatmen on the Missouri, was made into a print by The American Art Union and sold throughout the United States. In Bingham's second career as a politician, he ran for the Missouri State Legislature several times and was elected to serve a term in 1848; he was appointed state treasurer from 1862 to 1865. Links to American History Curriculum
SLIDE 10
BOATMEN ON THE MISSOURI
Introduction | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Slide List | Museum Visit