Detail of Fur Traders Descending the Missouri by George Caleb Bingham in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2022

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

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.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10159