1811-1879 George Caleb Bingham Gallery George Caleb Bingham (March 20, 1811 ?C July 7, 1879) was an American artist, whose work depicted his view of American life in the frontier lands along the Missouri River. Left to languish in obscurity, Bingham's work was rediscovered in the 1930s and he is now widely considered one of the greatest American painters of the 1800s. Born in Augusta County, Virginia, Bingham was the second of seven children born to Henry Vest Bingham and Mary Amend. Upon their marriage, Matthias Amend, Mary's father, gave ownership to the family mill, 1,180 acres of land and several slaves to Henry with the agreement that Matthias could live with the family the rest of his life. Henry offered the land and mill as surety for a friend's debt and, when the friend died in 1818, all was lost. George's family soon moved to Franklin, Missouri "where the land was said to be bountiful, fertile and cheap." Bingham was a self-taught artist. His sole childhood exposure to the field 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. George assisted Harding during his brief stay, an experience that left a powerful impression. In 1823, Bingham's father, now judge of Howard County Court, died of malaria on December 26 at the age of thirty-eight. To keep the family going, Mary Bingham opened a school for girls and George, then twelve, worked as school janitor to help keep the family afloat. At age sixteen, Bingham apprenticed with cabinet maker Jesse Green. After Green moved, he apprenticed with another cabinet maker, Justinian Williams. Both tradesmen were Methodist ministers and, while under their tutelage, Bingham studied religious texts, preached at camp meetings and thought about becoming a minister himself. Bingham also considered becoming a lawyer. However, by age nineteen, Bigham was painting portraits for $20.00 apiece, often completing the works in a single day. He drummed up work in both Franklin and Arrow Rock and, while his painting abilities were still developing, succeeded in impressing his patrons with his strong draftsmanship and ability to capture the likeness of his subject. Soon Bingham attempted to travel to St. Louis to ply his trade but contracted measles, which left him weak and permanently bald. In 1836, Bingham married Sarah Elizabeth Hutchison, who bore him three children over the subsequent twelve years before dying at the age of twenty-nine. George married twice more, first to Eliza Thomas, who died in a mental institution in 1876, and then to Martha Lykins, who lived until 1890. George's mother, Mary, died in 1851. By 1838, 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, including the lawyer James S. Rollins who was to become a life-long friend. To further his education, George spent three months in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania before continuing on to New York City to visit the National Academy of Design exhibition. Bingham was elected to the Missouri General Assembly in 1848. From 1856 to 1859, Bingham studied art with the members of the D??sseldorf School in D??sseldorf, Germany. Critics claim that this caused him to abandon the rustic American style in his art. Upon his return, he began painting less, turning to politics in the post-Civil War years and serving as state treasurer and adjutant general. He was also president of the Board of Police Commissioners for Kansas City, Missouri in 1874, appointing the first chief of police there . Toward the end of his life he was a professor of art at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.  Related Paintings of George Caleb Bingham :. | Marchands de fourrures descendant le Missouri | Wahlkampfrede oder Stimmenfang im Wahlkreis | Raftsmen Playing Cards | Die Heimkehr der Trapper | Zeichnung fur |
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John Quidor
1801-1888 Quidor was born in Gloucester Co., N. J., and in 1826 moved to New York City where he studied painting under John Wesley Jarvis and Henry Inman. Afterward he lived on a farm near Quincy, Illinois, but returned to New York City in 1851. He was obliged to support himself by painting the panels of stage coaches and fire engines and died in abject poverty. Although Quidor was little appreciated in his own time, after his death he was accorded a place among the best early American artists. His paintings establish a mysterious romantic setting for scenes in which he mingled macabre elements with an earthy humor. Many of his works, such as Ichabod Crane Pursued by the Headless Horseman, in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, were inspired by the writings of Washington Irving, who was a personal friend. Irving's A History of New York gave Quidor the subjects for the four paintings in the Brooklyn (N. Y.) Institute: Dancing on the Battery (c. 1860), Peter Stuyvesant's Wall Street Gate (1864), Voyage of the Good Oloff up the Hudson (1866), and The Voyage from Communipaw to Hell Gate (1866). These show Quidor's characteristic mellow and harmonious color, poetic imagination, and naïve humor. He is represented in the Brooklyn Museum by three paintings: Dorothea, Money Diggers, and Wolfert's Will. He also painted religious subjects such as Jesus Blessing the Sick.
Thomas Danby
(c. 1818 - 25 March 1886) was an English landscape painter. Danby was born, it is thought, in Bristol in south-west England, the younger son of Francis Danby (1793-1861). He had an elder brother, James Francis Danby (1816-75) who also became a landscape painter. Thomas went with his father to Europe in 1829, living for a time in Paris where he was able to earn a living by copying pictures at the Louvre in Paris. He thus became an earnest admireer and "student" of Claude Lorrain, whose aerial effects he sought to imitate. Returning to England about the same time as his father, he first exhibited at the British Institution in 1841, and afterwards frequently at the Royal Academy from 1843. He was a friend of Paul Falconer Poole, with whom he shared a house in Hampstead in 1843, and imbibed not a little of his romantic feeling for nature. From 1855 to his death, Danby resided in or near Hampstead in north London.. The subjects of his landscapes were usually taken from Welsh scenery, especially the old county of Merioneth; his pictures for the most part were not ideal compositions (unlike his father's work) but actual scenes pervaded with a true romantic spirit. "He was always trying" says the writer of his obituary in The Times newspaper, "to render his inner heart's feeling of a beautiful view rather than the local facts received on the retina." He came, it is said, within one vote of election as an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) but, failing eventually to attain Academy honours, he devoted himself in his latter years chiefly to watercolour painting. He became a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1860, an associate of the Society of Painters in Watercolours in 1867, and a full member of the latter in 1870; until his death his contributions were prominent amongst the works at the society's exhibitions. Danby died of a chest complaint, terminating in dropsy on 25 March 1886. He had been twice married, and had 2 daughters and a son from the second marriage.
Ferdinand Richardt
(10 April 1819 - 29 October 1895) Danish-American artist, in Denmark known for his lithographs of manor houses, and in the U.S. for his paintings of Niagara Falls and other landscapes. Ferdinand Richardt, the son of Johan Joachim Richardt and Johanne Frederikke ne Bohse, was born in Brede, north of Copenhagen in 1819. His father ran the inn/company store at the Brede factory. In 1832 the family relocated to nearby Ørholm to operate the inn at the paper-factory there. In 1839, they moved to Copenhagen. Ferdinand became briefly a carpenter's apprentice in 1835, but soon decided on a career in fine art, following the lead of his brother Carl. Beginning in 1836 Ferdinand studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Art under the architect and designer Gustav Friedrich Hetsch, the historical painter J. L. Lund and the classical sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. Richardt was awarded the Academy's small and large silver medals in 1839 and 1840, respectively. In 1847, he received a five year stipend from the crown, on the condition that he deliver one architectural and one landscape painting each year to the royal collection. Between 1855 and 1859 he visited in the United States. He maintained a studio in New York City, while traveling during the summers to Niagara Falls and to various destinations east of the Mississippi River. After returning to Denmark, Richardt married the widow Sophia Schneider ne Linnemann (1831-1888) in 1862. They traveled for part of a year in southern Europe, and from 1863 they lived for a period in England. In February 1864, Queen Victoria invited Richardt to display his art work to the court at Windsor Castle. In 1872 and 1873, Richardt sold many of his accumulated paintings and lithographs before emigrating to the United States with his family. They lived first in the town of Niagara Falls, N.Y. where the artist again produced canvases depicting the great waterfall and the surrounding area. In 1875, the Richardts moved to San Francisco, and finally in 1876 to Oakland. For the remaining twenty years of his life Richardt was active as a painter of California landscapes with a concentration on the San Francisco Bay Area. He exhibited and sold his works in San Francisco until at least 1887. At the same time he taught drawing privately. At his death in 1895, Richardt left a daughter, Johanna (1862-1897), and a stepson, Joost Schneider.