“Navigating the West: George Caleb Bingham and the River”

Bingham was one of 19th-century America’s most important painters, noted for his celebrations of frontier life during the 1840s and ’50s, a time when the Wild West meant Missouri. His dramatic use of light recalled European Romanticism, but rather than convey nature’s awe and wonder, Bingham depicted his subjects—the fur trappers, boatmen and other itinerants plying the Missouri River—in stately equipoise with their surroundings. He posed figures in knots resembling classical friezes, placing them atop barges or in canoes set in mid stream against the line dividing sky and water. His paintings, timeless and serene, applied an arcadian gloss to a young America’s bumptious spirit.