George Caleb Bingham

George Caleb Bingham (March 20, 1811 – July 7, 1879) was an American artist, soldier and politician known in his lifetime as "the Missouri Artist". Initially a Whig, he was elected as a delegate to the Missouri legislature before the American Civil War where he fought against the extension of slavery westward. During that war, although born in Virginia, Bingham was dedicated to the Union cause and became captain of a volunteer company which helped keep the state from joining the Confederacy, and then served four years as Missouri's Treasurer. During his final years, Bingham held several offices in Kansas City, while also serving as Missouri's Adjutant General. His paintings of American frontier life along the Missouri River exemplify the Luminist style. Early life and education Born on a farm in Augusta County, Virginia, George Caleb Bingham was the second of seven children that Mary Amend (1789–1851) bore with her husband Henry Vest Bingham (1784–1823). Upon their marriage, Mary's father Matthias Amend gave the Binghams ownership of the family mill, land, and several slaves with the agreement that Matthias could live with the family for the rest of his life. Henry Bingham offered the land and mill as surety for a friend's debt and, when the friend died in 1818, all was lost. In 1819, the Bingham family (including grandfather Amend) moved to Franklin, Missouri, on the Missouri River near the state's center as well as the eastern terminus of the Santa Fe Trail, "where the land was said to be bountiful, fertile and cheap." George Bingham was initially educated by his mother, and self-taught as an artist. His sole childhood exposure to a working artist was as a nine-year-old boy, when famed American portraitist Chester Harding visited Franklin looking for business, having recently sketched Daniel Boone in Warren County, Missouri (Boone's sons owned a salt spring and manufactured salt in Howard County). George assisted Harding during his brief stay, an experience that left a powerful impression. On December 23, 1823, Bingham's father Henry, who had initially opened a tavern in Franklin and in 1821 become the judge of the Howard County Court, died of malaria at the age of thirty-eight. His investment in a tobacco venture had failed, and debts forced the sale of the home in Franklin.