George Caleb Bingham’s “Fur Traders Descending the Missouri” is arguably his most famous painting. Its original title was “French Trader & Half Breed Son,” a reminder of those Frenchmen who explored the interior of North American long before other Europeans.
The painting is one of the most popular in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,...
While precisely situating Bingham and his work in the invention of “Western regionalism,” Angela Miller also has an idea of why this particularly painting remains so popular. It’s a “particularly poignant image of the antebellum West, suffused with longing for a maternal and encompassing wilderness purged of the human violence that so often accompanied settlement.” People also seem to really like the black “cat” in the bow of the boat, and are usually surprised to discover that it’s actually a baby bear.
.... In addition to being an artist, which didn’t pay all that well, Bingham was active in the Whig Party: he won a term to the Missouri legislature in 1848 after being cheated out of a close election in 1846.
Bingham combined his differing interests with paintings titled “Stump Speaking,” “The County Election,” and the “Verdict of the People.” These political canvases, [were] all painted in the 1850s....
My impression has always been that there was no scholarly consensus about the species of animal in the boat. Some have said it was a fox.
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