George Caleb Bingham

George Caleb Bingham (* March 20, 1811 in Augusta County, Virginia; † July 7 1879 in Kansas City, Missouri ) was a painter of the Düsseldorf School of Painting and the American Realism and politicians in Missouri.

Life

Bingham was the son of the farmer and his wife Mary Henry Vest Bingham, born Amend. 1819 the family moved to the eight year old son to Franklin, Missouri, where he grew up. In 1827 he began an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker in Boonville, while he has painted on the side. From 1833 onwards, he moved as a portrait painter along the Missouri River, in 1835 he created his earliest self-portrait. In 1838 he began studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and in 1840 he had his first exhibition at the National Academy of Design in New York.

Until 1843 Bingham painted portraits of American politicians in Washington, from 1845, he created his famous pictures of river scenes, on which he portrayed the lives of people along the Missouri River. These images were very known primarily through the bites of the American Art Union. In the 1850s he also painted several genre pictures with political content.

Since 1840, Bingham was politically active in Missouri. In 1848 he became a deputy in the House of Representatives of the State. After 1850 there were regular trips to New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC and from 1856 to 1859, he traveled to study in Dusseldorf. In 1862 he was Minister of Finance (State treasurer ) of Missouri and adjutant general. In 1877 he was a professor at the Missouri School of Art in Columbia, then went to Boonville and finally to Kansas City, where he died in 1879 of cholera.