Review: George Caleb Bingham’s Serene Images of Rivers and Frontier Life, at the Met

New York Times ^ | June 18, 2015 | By Roberta Smith

[Brad from Tennessee]

Figuratively speaking, George Caleb Bingham tamed the Wild West. Working on paper and canvas, he gave a veneer of gentility and preternatural, even timeless calm to the Midwestern river valleys in the decades before the Civil War. The results still look very much alive, even radical today, feeling all-American both aesthetically and historically but with echoes of European painting.

Starting around 1845, Bingham (1811-1879) depicted the hardscrabble life along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers — the region’s main arteries — as spacious idylls of serenity and sometimes joy. More artifice than reality, these paintings are carefully examined in “Navigating the West: George Caleb Bingham and the River,” a riveting exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art organized by the St. Louis Art Museum and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. The Met’s presentation has been overseen by Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, curator of American paintings and sculpture, assisted by Stephanie L. Herdrich, an assistant research curator.

The first museum show devoted to Bingham’s river paintings, it contains 16 of the 17 that still exist. (Missing is one in the collection of the White House, which does not lend, though a reproduction of the painting, “Lighter Relieving a Steamship Aground,” is included here.) They are complemented by nearly 50 of Bingham’s exacting figure studies in brush, black ink and wash over pencil. almost the total he made for the river paintings. They are often as engaging: Their sensitive play of light and shadow across rugged faces and different textures of worn, rumpled clothing gives the men a very real physical weight and often a substantial psychic presence as well.

Part of the timeless quality of Bingham’s art stems from the slow, patient way he drew his figures. . .

[Brad from Tennessee]

Prints at link.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Of course, central to this peacefulness is that Bingham’s universe is populated almost entirely by men of European extraction.

Even when looking at art they can't forget the race wars...

[Benito Cereno]

I love his painting of Daniel Boone leading settlers through the Cumberland Gap, leading them out of the darkness into the light.

[Brad from Tennessee]

[Even when looking at art they can't forget the race wars...]

Bingham was was pro-union during the Civil War. I don't know what they expect. I live 150 years after Bingham and my life is pretty much populated by white people. According to Wikipedia these are my county's demographics:

[The racial makeup of the county was 94.91% White, 3.69% Black or African American, 0.20% Native American, 0.16% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.30% from other races, and 0.72% from two or more races. 1.02% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 45.1% were of American, 9.8% Irish, 9.7% English and 9.5% German ancestry according to Census 2000.]

Of course, I can watch them on TV.

[x_plus_one]

Know nothing news writers with no knowledge of American History rule the roost and are believed by mind numbed masses.

St Louis which sits at the conjunction of the Missouri, Illinois and Mississippi Rivers was a center of the voyageur Fur Trade. Bingham drew pictures with a cast of characters unrivaled anywhere else in North America.

The half breed Metis culture founded the Illinois Country in the late 1600's. Indians, free and bound metis indians, free and bound negroes, Spanish, Mexicans, and Mestizos trading with Santa Fe, French Canadian and East Coast American English immigrants, - all part of the Illinois Country River world.

Bingham drew what he saw and knew.

[Misterioso]

For a window into great art:

http://www.artrenewal.org/

[jimfree]

My Missouri-bred wife has been a fan of Bingham for many years. Thanks for the post.