Posted by Susan Benford
Famous artwork depicting the American West achieved its greatest popularity during the mid-19th century. Before George Eastman's invention of roll film in 1884, photographs were created using unwieldly, fragile glass plates; consequently, photographic images were costly and rare. This meant that information about the natural world and the American West was primarily disseminated by famous painters and artists. Among these are John James Audubon, whose seminal book Birds of America consisted of 435 life-sized bird prints; George Catlin, who cataloged the lives, art and costumes of Plains Indians in his exhaustive Indian Gallery; Thomas Cole, a leading Romantic landscape painter; and George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879), the son of a Missouri tobacco farmer.
Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845 is one of Bingham's famous art paintings of the traders and hunters who travelled the Mississippi River and its branches. Typical of his earlier works, Bingham balances strong horizontals and diagonals, anchoring
Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845. Oil on canvas. 29" x 36 1/2". Morris K. Jesup Fund, 1933 (33.61). Metropolitan Museum of Art. figures at right angles to create solidity and mass. Bingham's depiction of a simple, rustic life, free of tension and social strife, shows two trappers in early morning. In their dugout canoe is a dead duck, and either a tethered pet bear (according to Marilyn Stokstad, author of "Art History"), or a cat (according to Ingo F. Walther, editor of "Masterpieces of Western Art"). Notes Hugh Honour and John Fleming ("The Visual Arts: A History"), "Rarely has the effect of early morning light dissipating a mist been as beautifully evoked."
The trappers' attire and thoughtful demeanor belied perceptions from current literature that this occupation was peopled by uncivilized men. The idyllic environment and its dream-like aspects were also at odds with the current state of trapping; by 1845, the year in which Bingham created this now famous painting, the profession was dominated by trading companies rather than the French voyaguers who first pioneered the trade.
Bingham initially titled this work French Trader - Half Breed Son, referring to the boy's parentage, a Frenchman and a Native American woman. In 1845, Bingham sold this painting for a paltry $75 to the American Art Union, at which time it was (wisely) renamed Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845. Bingham was all but forgotten until 1933, when the Metropolitan Museum purchased this work, catupulting it into one of the most famous paintings in the world.
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