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George Caleb Bingham American
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 758
In the summer of 1845, Bingham returned to his St. Louis home from a winter stay in central Missouri, bringing with him several paintings and sketches. This was one of those works that he later sent to New York’s American Art-Union, a subscription-based organization that promoted American art nationally through exhibitions and the distribution of popular prints. Titled by the artist "French Trader & Half breed Son", the Art-Union changed it to the more generic and less controversial "Fur Traders Descending the Missouri". Bingham, who began his career as a portraitist, produced this distinctive genre painting with little precedent in his oeuvre. The tranquil scene, with its luminous atmosphere, idealized the American frontier for the benefit of an Eastern audience.
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Artwork Details
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Title: Fur Traders Descending the Missouri
Artist: George Caleb Bingham (American, Augusta County, Virginia 1811–1879 Kansas City, Missouri)
Date: 1845
Culture: American
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 29 x 36 1/2 in. (73.7 x 92.7 cm)
Credit Line: Morris K. Jesup Fund, 1933
Accession Number: 33.61
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Native Perspectives
Contemporary Native artists and historians respond to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Euro-American representations of Indigenous subjects in the American Wing's collection.
Timeline of Art History
Essay
American Scenes of Everyday Life, 1840-1910
Essay
Industrialization and Conflict in America: 1840-1875
Chronology
The United States and Canada, 1800-1900 A.D.
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Masterpieces of American Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Guide to The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825–1861
Art = Discovering Infinite Connections in Art History
The American Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The American Wing: A Guide
American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915
American Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 1, A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born by 1815
American Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 1, Painters Born by 1815
Related Artworks
- All Related Artworks
- In the same gallery
- By George Caleb Bingham
- The American Wing
- Canvas
- Oil
- Paintings
- From North and Central America
- From United States
- From A.D. 1800–1900
Stump Speaking
After George Caleb Bingham (American, Augusta County, Virginia 1811–1879 Kansas City, Missouri)
after 1856
Boatmen on the Missouri
George Caleb Bingham (American, Augusta County, Virginia 1811–1879 Kansas City, Missouri)
1846
In a Quandary, or Mississippi Raftsmen at Cards
George Caleb Bingham (American, Augusta County, Virginia 1811–1879 Kansas City, Missouri)
1851
The Jolly Flat-Boat Men
After George Caleb Bingham (American, Augusta County, Virginia 1811–1879 Kansas City, Missouri)
1846
The Hatch Family
Eastman Johnson (American, Lovell, Maine 1824–1906 New York)
1870–71
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The American Wing at The Met
The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works by African American, Euro American, Native American, and Latin American artists, ranging from the colonial to early-modern period.
