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 :. | Fur Traders Descending the Missouri | Wahlkampfrede oder Stimmenfang im Wahlkreis | Fur hand put on boots on the Missouri | Self-Portrait | Folk-s arbitrament |
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HOLBEIN, Ambrosius
German Northern Renaissance Painter, 1494-ca.1519 Painter, draughtsman and designer of woodcuts, son of Hans Holbein. In the drawing of Ambrosius and Hans Holbein the Younger (1511; Berlin, Kupferstichkab.) by their father, Hans's age is given as 14, and although that of Ambrosius cannot be read clearly, he appears to have been the elder brother. In 1514 he was probably working near the Bodensee, and a Virgin and Child (Basle, Kstmus.), with the coat of arms of Johann von Botzheim, Canon of Konstanz Cathedral (c. 1480-1535), appears to be his work. In 1515 he was working as a journeyman to the painter Thomas Schmid (c. 1480-c. 1550-60) on the decoration of the abbot's Festsaal in the Benedictine St Georgkloster at Stein-am-Rhein, which included allegorical figures of women, one of which, Death with a Female Lute-player (in situ), is signed AH. Also in 1515 he joined his brother Hans in Basle, where together they decorated with marginal drawings (1515-16) the copy of Erasmus's Praise of Folly (Basle, Kstmus.) belonging to the schoolmaster Myconius (Oswald Geissh?sler; d 1552); the distinction between the hands of the two brothers can be made only on stylistic grounds. They also painted a school sign for Myconius, each apparently working on a different side. On 25 July 1516 Ambrosius was recorded staying in the house of the painter Hans Herbst, in whose workshop he may have been employed. On 14 February 1517 he was enrolled in the Basle painters' guild, and on 5 June 1518 he became a citizen of the city. Numerous woodcut designs executed for Basle printers from 1517 onwards and signed with Ambrosius Holbein's initials survive, most of which are set in architectural frameworks inspired by the Italian Renaissance,
Conrad Martens
England/Australia Painter , 1801-1878 Australian painter, lithographer and librarian of English birth. Son of a London merchant, he studied c. 1816 under Copley Fielding. His training was as a watercolourist and his most important works are watercolours, although he also produced paintings in oils. His early work displays the taste then current for the Picturesque. Francis Danby, David Cox and Turner were artists he admired. Martens left for India in 1832 or 1833 but at Montevideo joined Charles Darwin's expedition, replacing Augustus Earle as topographical draughtsman aboard the Beagle. The work strengthened his observation of detail and skill as a draughtsman. He left the expedition in October 1834 and, travelling via Tahiti and New Zealand, arrived in Sydney in April 1835. There he worked as a professional artist, in the 1840s and 1850s producing lithographic views of the Sydney area to augment his income. In 1863 he was appointed Parliamentary Librarian, which secured his finances. The skills he had acquired aboard the Beagle helped to gain him commissions to depict the estates around Sydney. However, his admiration for Turner, and with this the desire to elevate landscape as a subject, prompted him to subordinate line to mood in a Romantic treatment of the landscape. His thoughts were clearly stated in a lecture on landscape painting given in 1856 at the Australian Library, Sydney (see Smith, 1975).
Jan ten Compe
painted view of the Town Hall in 18th century