Provenance

The Honorable Claiborne Pell

Pell, Claiborne de Borda

American, 1918 - 2009

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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