George Caleb Bingham

American, 1811 - 1879

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American artist (1811–1879)

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A bearded man with wrinkled, peachy skin and reddened cheeks sits and smokes a pipe on a wooden box in a landscape in this vertical painting. The man’s body faces us, and he peers at us with dark eyes under heavy, bushy white brows. Wrinkles line his forehead, the corners of his eyes, and his cheeks. He has a bulbous nose and a gray beard, and the long-stem pipe is pinched in his downturned mouth. His shaggy gray hair is covered by a cardinal-red cap. He wears a blousy daffodil-yellow shirt, which is loose around the neck, faded and patched blue pants, and scuffed brown boots. His legs are crossed with one knee over the other, and one fist rests in his lap. The other elbow is propped on a pyramid of three wooden barrels stacked on their sides to our left. A few bits of bricks or red stones are near the man’s feet, and a wooden houseboat with a low-pitched roof is in the near distance, to our right. The platform under the structure floats on a river, which is lined with trees to our right and mountains to our left. The sunset warms the face of the mountains and the trees to red and gold. Sage-green and peach clouds billow above the man, dividing the sky diagonally in front of bright blue sky beyond. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower left corner, “G.C. Bingham 1850.”
George Caleb Bingham, Mississippi Boatman, 1850, oil on canvas, John Wilmerding Collection, 2004.66.1

Mississippi Boatman

George Caleb Bingham · 1850 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2004.66.1

A flatboat with eight light-skinned men floats toward us down a wide river in this horizontal painting. The boat nearly spans the width of the composition and has low sides and a shallowly arched, low cabin upon which the men gather. At the center, a man with dark hair and wearing light blue trousers and a pink shirt dances with one foot and both arms raised. To our right a seated musician plays a fiddle, and to our left a smiling man holds up a metal pot and strikes the flat bottom with the back of his fingers. The remaining men sit or recline around the musicians and dancing man, some looking toward the dancer and two looking out at us. Bedrolls and animal skins are stored in the cabin below. The olive-green surface of the river is streaked with pale blue. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition. The trees and riverbanks in the distance are hazy beneath a watery blue sky.
George Caleb Bingham, The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2015.18.1

The Jolly Flatboatmen

George Caleb Bingham · 1846 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2015.18.1

Three people gather around the doorway of a small cottage set in a sun-warmed yard in this almost square painting. At the center of the composition, the tan cottage has a faded, peach-tinged thatched roof and a window with an open shutter to the right of the door. The top half of the Dutch door is swung open, and a woman wearing a white cap and blue, low-cut garment leans her forearms along the bottom half from inside the structure. Two men flank the door. One stands to our left, looking at the woman in profile. He wears a straw-colored hat, white shirt, ruby-red vest, and dark pants. To our right, a seated man wears a brown hat, a sage-green coat, and slate-blue pants. A rickety fence to our left separates us from a grove of trees, the massive green canopies almost filling the top left quadrant of the painting. Another picket fence comes toward us from the right side of the cottage. It opens onto the dirt patch that nearly spans the lower edge of the canvas. To our right, the kinked branches of a mostly dead tree with only a few sparse leaves looms above the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up the composition. Beyond it, a flat, grassy field stretches back to the edge of a body of water where two cows and possibly other animals stand and lie in the distance. Bands of trees become hazier in the distance. A few birds perch atop the cottage roof and more wheel above, painted as tiny strokes against milky-white clouds that give way to a pale blue sky. The artist signed the lower left corner, “G. C. Bingham.”
George Caleb Bingham, Cottage Scenery, 1845, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund and Gifts of Charles C. Glover, Jr., Orme Wilson, and Mr. and Mrs. Lansdell K. Christie), 2014.79.6

Cottage Scenery

George Caleb Bingham · 1845 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2014.79.6

George Caleb Bingham, The Death of General Warren, pen and ink over graphite, John Davis Hatch Collection, 1979.20.7

The Death of General Warren

George Caleb Bingham · · pen and ink over graphite ·  Accession ID  1979.20.7