|
|
Game of Checkers Artist
George Caleb Bingham
George Caleb Bingham 1811 – 1879
Augusta County, Virginia
 Self-Portraits 
1835 and 1850
The Checker Players
Oil Checkers Art Painting 1850
- Checkers artist
George Caleb Bingham, a self taught realist painter
whose oil paintings clearly depicted the genre
of every day early American frontier life
along the Missouri River in the mid 19th
century.
- Bingham's sole childhood exposure
to art was at age 9, when famed American
portraitist, Chester Harding, visited Bingham’s
hometown on business, and George assisted
Harding during his brief stay; this experience
left a powerful impression on the young
boy.
- At the age of sixteen, artist George
Bingham apprenticed with cabinetmaker Jesse
Green and then after Green moved, he apprenticed
with another cabinetmaker, Justinian Williams;
both tradesmen were Methodist ministers
and, while under their tutelage, George
Bingham studied religious texts and thought
about becoming a minister, but then he
also considered becoming a lawyer.
- However, by age nineteen, Bingham finally
realized that he truly wanted to become
an artist and by this time, his portraits
were selling for $20.00 a piece.
- By 1838, checkers artist
George Caleb Bingham was already beginning
to make a name for himself as a portrait
artist in St. Louis, his studio visited
by several prominent local citizens and
statesmen.
- In the same year, to further his education,
artist George Bingham spent three months
in Philadelphia and here he created his
first genre painting entitled ‘Western
Boatman Ashore’ and then he
continued on to New York to visit the National
Academy of Design exhibition.
- Bingham’s best known subjects were
the masculine world of river boatmen and
rural politics that he depicted in well composed,
candid genre paintings as in leisurely activities
such as a simple checkers game amongst friends,
but he also painted portraits and landscapes.
- Although he had a technical facility
for painting, Bingham’s early works
were rather stiff and somewhat staid in
style, despite the strong expression, as
is seen in his self portrait of 1835.
- Among his earliest and finest genre
paintings was Fur Traders Descending the
Missouri (1845), which depicted a man and
a boy in a canoe in early morning.
- Gradually checkers artist
George Caleb Bingham stylized portraits and
genre scenes developed into an expression
that was deeper and more insightful, where
some of the paintings depicted a dreamy
lyricism and romanticized emotion.
- In his oil painting of 1850, The Checker
Players, he used a rather traditional triangular
composition for his characters, but he
infused the canvas with dramatic lighting
to highlight the checkers players and the
spectator against a dark background and
in doing so he drew the viewer’s
focus to the checkers game, the cheerful
mood and content facial expressions as
well as the naturalistic pose of the players
around the checkerboard.
- Artist George Bingham depicted every
day common people in daily chores, routines
or leisurely past times in a dignified
and often noble manner.
- His best narratives were political paintings
and historical commentary that were created
between 1845 and 1856 and his canvases
of life on the Mississippi and Missouri
rivers were revealing, humorous and lyrical;
most of the men in these paintings were
idle, and the serenity of the river was
in strong contrast to his riotous political
scenes; his three major political paintings,
County Election (1852), Stump Speaking
(1854), and Verdict of the People (1855),
were liberally filled with men talking
or listening, while drinking or drunk.
- From 1856 to 1859, artist George Bingham
studied art with the members of the Dusseldorf
School, Germany; however, some critics
believe that this exposure to a different
mode of art expression caused him to abandon
his earlier rustic American style; later
depictions lacked the clarity and vitality
of his earlier works.
- Upon his return, in his latter years
he spent his time in portrait painting
and politics, where he held several different
positions, but 1877 he was appointed professor
of art at the University of Missouri; his
involvement in Missouri politics led to
many portrait commissions.
- During artist
George Caleb Bingham's lifetime he was best known
as a politician and portrait painter, rather
than as the master of genre he is considered
today.
|
|
