George Caleb Bingham

Happy Birthday George Caleb Bingham!! Today we celebrate an artist from the Hudson River School, born in 1811, in Virginia. His family pioneered to Missouri when he was eight and becoming interested in painting, he met portrait artist Chester Harding. Later, Bingham studied art at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, concentrated on portrait painting for a time, and finally returned to the  Missouri frontier. Bingham's mastery of the human figure is evident in his subsequent work focusing on frontier genre. Below we take a look at his most well known: Fur Traders Descending the Missouri. The quiet solitude of the still river, traders and reflected fox capture the tranquility of the moment.