The image size of this print is 23 1/2 x 30 with ample margins.

THE JOLLY FLATBOATMEN by George C. Bingham (American 1811-1879) Manoogian Foundation

Bingham's family moved to frontier Missouri at Boon's Lick in 1819. After his father died in 1827, he was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker but resolved to become an artist. He followed the advice of the painter Chester Harding to teach himself to paint by copying engravings with homemade pigments. By 1835, he was recognized as an able frontier painter, charging $20 per portrait in St. Louis. In 1836, he moved to Natchez where he charged $40. His portraits had become standard decorations in prosperous Missouri homes. He was able to afford three months at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1837, observing genre as well as portrait painting. From 1838 to 1840, he sent paintings for exhibition in New York City. In 1841 he went to Washington, DC to paint portraits of leading politicians.

In St. Louis in 1845 he finished The Jolly Flatboatmen that was immediately popular in the form of an American Art Union engraving. This was followed by Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, Raftmen Playing Cards, and Lighter Relieving a Steamboat Aground. Bingham entered politics in 1848, an interest that provided Stump Speaking and the Verdict of the People. A series of government jobs and European travel left less time for painting, but in 1872 he visited Colorado and thereafter painted the View of Pikes Peak that is in the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art collection. Bingham was described as small and delicate but dynamic, an excellent conversationalist married three times, and always wigged to cover baldness from measles at 19.