The River Art of George Caleb Bingham with Gregory Schmidt

Tuesday, February 20, 2020, 6:00-7:00PM, free*

George Caleb Binham, The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846. Oil on canvas.

This presentation focuses on George Caleb Bingham, one of the most respected and well-known American artists of the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Bingham was a transitional figure in American art history. Largely self-taught, this mid-westerner sought to place himself within the highest traditions of European and American art, but also aspired to create a uniquely American vision of the midwestern frontier and its people. He rose to fame in the 1840s on the strength of a series of “River Paintings” that depicted people whose livelihoods depended on the rivers of the Mississippi watershed. Most notable of these works were Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845) and The Jolly Flatboatmen (1846), now considered two of the most iconic genre paintings in American art history. They will be examined in some detail in the presentation.

Gregory Schmidt earned a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PH. D. in History at the University of Illinois in Urbana/Champaign. He taught at Illinois State University and the University of South Dakota before joining the History faculty at Winona State University in 1984. In his thirty-four years at WSU he has offered courses on many subjects, including The Age of Jackson, American Cultural History, and the History of the Mississippi River. His recent public presentations have included discussions of “Western Movies and the Cold War,” “Boatmen of the Mississippi,” “The Black Hawk War,” and “Woody Guthrie and The Grapes of Wrath.”

*This event is free thanks to the generous support of Ernest and Sally Micek in memory of W.B. "Bill" Gautch.