"But I forget that I am a painter and not a politician"
Subtitle: the letters of George Caleb Bingham
By: with an introduction by Joan Stack ; edited by Lynn Wolf Gentzler and compiled by Roger E. Robinson
Contributors: Stack, Joan, 1965-; Gentzler, Lynn Wolf; Robinson, Roger E.
Publisher: State Historical Society of Missouri; Friends of Arrow Rock
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Columbia; Arrow Rock, Mo
Language: eng
Number of pages: 564
ISBN-13: 9780981693934; 9780981693927
Subjects: Correspondence; Painters; Politicians; Politics and government
Description: George Caleb Bingham, who earned the sobriquet of "the Missouri artist," evolved from a locally known portrait painter to an artist of national renown. His letters illuminate the complex personality of a man actively involved in the political, social, and cultural life of nineteenth-century America -- an eyewitness to westward expansion, a firsthand observer of river and rail commerce, and a participant in the Civil War. [...] In a fascinating introduction, Joan Stack summarizes Bingham's artistic career. She focuses on the artist's efforts to market himself as a "western" painter and finds that much of his national reputation in the nineteenth century derived from the genre and political paintings of the 1840s and 1850s, particularly those from which prints were made and widely distributed. Readers interested in nineteenth-century Missouri will find these letters from the pen of an artist who maintained a keen connection to the political affairs of his time truly engaging.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 541-552) and index.

With support from the Harriet Pillsbury Foundation.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: the fashioning of a frontier artist; title: The making of an artist/politician, 1835-1849; title: Politics and painting on the national scene, 1849-1854; title: Slavery, travel abroad, and the impending crisis, 1855-1859; title: Civil War and its consequences, 1859-1868; title: Artist as polemicist : Order No. 11, 1868-1873; title: Public service and personal tragedy, 1874-1876; title: The final years, 1877-1879; title: Epilogue.