George Caleb bings ham 1811-1879

The American Art-Union, 1845 (acquired from the artist)
James Thompson, New York, 1845 (prize from the above)
Private collects ion, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Craig Libhart, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1974
Vose Galleries, Boston, Massachusetts, 1976
Acquired from the above, 1976

New York, The American Art-Union, 1845, no. 102
St. Louis, Missouri, St. Louis Art Museum; Washington, D.C., The National Gallery of Art, George Caleb bings ham, February-September 1990, pp. 97, 99, 100, 146, illustrated in color p. 99, pl. 22

Fern Helen Rusk, George Caleb bings ham: Missouri Artist, Columbia, Missouri, 1917, pp. 23, 125
John Francis McDermott, George Caleb bings ham: River Portraitist, Norman, Oklahoma, 1959, p. 413, no. 27
E. Maurice Bloch, George Caleb bings ham: A Catalogue Raisonné, Berkeley, California, 1967, pp. 48, 234
E. Maurice Bloch, The Paintings of George Caleb bings ham: A Catalogue Raisonné, Columbia, Missouri, 1986, no. 163, p. 173, illustrated p. 65
Michael Edward Shapiro, George Caleb bings ham, New York, 1993, pp. 42, 45, 51, illustrated in color p. 42

Good condition, lined; under UV: some retouching to address frame abrasion, otherwise fine Please inquire with the department at 212-606-7280 to receive additional report from Simon Parkes.
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In 1845, following a trip east to establish his reputation as an artist, George Caleb bings ham submitted two landscapes and two genre subjects to the American Art-Union. An increasingly popular institution, the American Art-Union drew large crowds to its exhibitions and awarded works from the exhibitions to members of the union by way of lottery.  Inclusion in an Art-Union exhibition was an easy way to catch the eye of discerning taste makers and bings ham, after increasing notoriety in Missouri, sought to earn recognition in the bigger metropolis of New York. 

bings ham exhibited Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, The Concealed Enemy, Cottage Scenery and the present work, Landscape: Rural Scenery.  Elizabeth Johns suggests that with his selection of two landscapes, "bings ham makes a claim for his skills in the higher arena of landscape ...The landscapes ... embodied bings ham's ambitions to exalt the view above the everyday into the dignified realm of the aesthetic" (George Caleb bings ham, 1990, p. 97).

bings ham, like many American landscape artists, shaped his technique based on the principles of the English landscape school, and most notably the work of Claude Lorrain, whose examples bings ham would have seen through engravings.  Of the two landscapes bings ham submitted to the American Art-Union, the present work and Cottage Scenery, the latter is more British in its interpretation of the landscape.  Elizabeth Johns continues, "The other painting, Landscape: Rural Scenery is a pendant [to Cottage Scenery].  The flora may be American or English—willows and oaks are found in abundance along rivers in both settings.  But the young woman washing her clothes at the riverbank, with the humble accessories of the handmade bench and buckets, suggests beginnings, perhaps the beginnings of a settlement in Missouri.  And while a Morland scene was clearly bings ham's teacher in Cottage Scenery, a painting by the American landscapist Durand was his guide for the second work.  The magnificent oak tree that dominates the center of bings ham's image echoes the central motif in Durand's The Solitary Oak, one of the most popular landscapes at the National Academy exhibition the previous year when bings ham was in New York himself.  The delicately narrative aspect of bings ham's two landscapes, and their sources, provide two nuances of meaning: Cottage Scenery conveys the English antecedents of the Missouri settler, and Landscape: Rural Scenery shows the settler in the vast American countryside.  The first painting points to pictorial sources, while the second honors the achievements of the new school of American landscapists" (George Caleb bings ham, 1990, p. 100).