Bingham’s
genre paintings were neglected by the community of art critics until an exhibit
of the Museum of Modern
Art (New York)
in 1935. His talent lay in his keen interest in the lives of his fellow
citizens, which complimented his political activities. A leading citizen in Missouri during the Civil War and the Reconstruction,
Bingham’s life spanned the period of expansion following the Louisiana
Purchase of 1803.
His
own family had come to the Missouri wilderness
from Virginia
in the first flood tide of immigration to the West. He was a sharp and
painstaking observer, not unlike Mark Twain, his contemporary. Bingham’s his
paintings of the Mississippi
in its most colorful phases have a striking simplicity. In his canvases, we
have the honest but remarkable records of the artist’s own day, a magnificent
chapter in the saga of the American West.
