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George Caleb Bingham
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George Caleb Bingham’s history is so entwined with Missouri that he is called “the Missouri artist.” Known for his Luminist works – paintings filled with a glowing light—he captured what was then the American West. Bingham was also a soldier during the Civil War, and a politician.
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<p>In the summer of 1845, Bingham returned to his St. Louis home from a winter stay in central Missouri, bringing with him several paintings and sketches. This was one of those works that he later sent to New York’s American Art-Union, a subscription-based organization that promoted American art nationally through exhibitions and the distribution of popular prints. Titled by the artist "French Trader & Half breed Son", the Art-Union changed it to the more generic and less controversial "Fur Traders Descending the Missouri". Bingham, who began his career as a portraitist, produced this distinctive genre painting with little precedent in his oeuvre. The tranquil scene, with its luminous atmosphere, idealized the American frontier for the benefit of an Eastern audience.</p>
<p>A Native perspective:<br />
Famous for its exceptional calm, this work seems more concerned with atmosphere than the narrative vignettes typical of genre painting. The original title, French Trader and Half-Breed Son, provides greater context for Bingham's masterpiece: French fur traders routinely married Indigenous women to establish the necessary kinship relations that made it possible for them to take furs from Native territories. These marriages not only created valuable trade networks but also established familial obligations of reciprocation that meant goods flowed into Native communities. Bingham's painting offers an alternative vision of western expansion—one characterized by intermarriage and trade, not conflict. The American Art-Union's change of title in 1845 from the more racialized and less palatable original resulted in a loss of insight into one facet of the early frontier.</p>
<p>—Scott Manning Stevens (Akwesasne Mohawk)<br />
Both citations are from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.</p>
<p>SKU: 6832<br />Creator: George Caleb Bingham<br />Date: 1845<br />Original Medium: Oil on canvas<br />Original Size: 29 × 36 1/2 in.<br />Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art<br /><span style=\"font-size:small\"></span></p>
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