a
#“Qrder No.11*
By ELMO SCOTT WATSON
JR pearly a century he has been
known as “the Missouri artist,” a
characterization which rather defi
nitely limited the scope of his fame,
During his lifetime he enjoyed a
certain measure of recognition as
one of the leading painters In the
West. The American Art union
chose several of his pictures for
reproduction as colored lithographs
and their wide circulation made his
work familiar to most Americans.
he never signed his paintings, the name of the
man himself is comparatively unknown. Thou-
sands who visited the Missouri exhibit in the
Hall of States at A Century of Progress expos
tion 3 for the first time
an original of one of his most famous paintings
and for the first time connected with it the name
of George Caleb Bingham,
jut because
Jut a wider recognition, tardy though it has
been, has come at last to “the Missouri artist”
It started several years ago when a citizen of
that state took an option on Bingham's home at
Arrow Rock and suggested its purchase by the
United Danghters of the Confederacy as a shrine
to the Southern cause. Three years ago another
Missourian, scion of a family intimately con-
nected with the painter's career, declared that
Bingham might well be called “Missouri's for-
gotten artist,” for all the honor which it had
paid him, and announced his intention of starting
a movement to revive Interest in the man and
his work. In 1033 there was a loan show of
Bingham paintings in the Kansas Art institute
and last year the director of the St. Louis Art
museum gathered from various parts of the coun-
try a representative group of his pictures which
were on exhibition there for several weeks,
Another sigual honor came last month when
the Museum of Modern Art in New York city
gave a show of Bingham's work. Time Magazine,
featuring the story of this exhibition in its de-
vartment on art, declared :
“Critics fell over themselves with such phrases
as ‘a modern Delacroix,’ ‘last of the Renaissance
tradition’ ‘rival of David and Ingres.’ Only can-
tious bang-haired Royal Cortissoz sounded a note
of doubt in the general acclaim for George Caleb
Bingham ; “There is no distinction of style about
his work. He was a mildly competent, mildly
interesting practitioner, whose local legend may
well be revived as a matter of pious courtesy.’
“Mildly competent his work may be, but the
elaborate canvases of George Caleb Bingham de-
scribed early life on the Mississippl and Missouri
rivers far more ably than the much-touted Cur.
rier & Ives lithographs. Bingham was one of
the few painters in the world who was a prac-
ticing politician all his life, and he remains to
day one of the few Missouri artists ever to gain
national fame.”
The paradox of his being both an artist and a
practicing politician, however, is only one of the
many interesting facts in his career, Bingham was
born on a plantation in Augusta county, Virginia,
March 20, 1811. When the boy was eight years
old Henry Vest Bingham, his Scotch father, Jost
all his money and moved his family of a wife.
seven children and thelr grandfather to the lit
tle frontier town of Franklin in Howard county,
Missourl. From his earliest years the boy dab
bled with pencil and paint brush. He made hi»
own paints, using axle grease, vegetable dyes
brick dust mixed with oll and even ‘his own
bloud, obtained by cutting the ends of his fingers
. A year after the arrival of the Bingham famil;
in Franklin a fortunate circumstance aided the
's artistic ambition, Across the Missour
ver at Boonslick Danlel Boone had settled and
up the river from St. Louls came the artist
Chester Harding, to paint
Boone's portrait. It is
probable that the boy
watched the painter at
work, saw the likeness of
the famous Kentucky
ploneer grow on the can-
vas and view with envi
ous wonder the finished
product. It is more cer.
tain that Harding saw
some of the sketches with
which the boy had
adorned the fence, the
“The Jolly
Flatboatmen”
pump and the walls of the chicken house on his
father's farm and gave him some much-needed
encouragement,
When Bingham was twelve his father died and
Mary Amend Bingham, the thrifty, resourceful
German housewife, took her brood of children
to a little farm In Saline county, the only thing
left them after her husband's death. At the uge
of sixteen Bingham was apprenticed to a cabinet.
maker in Boonville, learned something about
wood carving and made wood panels on which
he painted pictures. He also began the study of
law in his spare time and even took up theology
with the idea of possibly becoming a Methodist
minister.
Fortunately for him and for American art,
however, Chester Harding again came to Boon
ville, noted the progress the boy had made and
strongly advised him to concentrate on a career
as an artist. More than that, he gave young
Bingham lessons and by the time he was nine
teen he had definitely decided upon painting as
his life work. Borrowing $100 from a friend
he used it for more instruction by teachers
in St. Louis. In 1838 he went East to study
in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and
there his career began to blossom into full flow.
er. He met many artists and had the oppor.
tunity of seeing many paintings, Not only did
he see the portraits by such masters as Gilbert
Stuart but he also saw descriptive or story pie
tures, technically known as genre painting,
which appealed to him strongly and in which he
began experimenting. He also continued his por-
trait painting and did pictures of all the celebri-
ties he met—Andrew Jackson, John Quincey
Adams, Van Buren, Calhoun, Buchanan and John
Howard Payne, composer of “Home Sweet
Home.”
Returning to Missouri six years later Bingham
started on his career £8 a genre painter. The
fur-trading era was drawing to a close, as were
other phases of frontier life, and America owes
a debt of gratitude to George Caleb Bingham for
preserving on canvas so much of it before it was
gone forever. About this time he painted his first
version of “The Jolly Flatboatmen™ (there were
several later versions), one of his best-known
pictures,
The next thing to which the versatile Bingham
turned his attention was politics, In a hotly
contested election he won a seat In the Missouri
legislature by three votes but his career as a
law-meker does not seem to have interfered seri
ously with his painting. He continued to turn
out scenes of life on the river and it was these
paintings which first became widely known
through the lithographs of the American Art
union, One result of his political career in Mis
sourl was to torn his attention to painting ple
tures of that phase of ploneer life, and in “The
Stump Speaker,” “Canvassing for a Vote,” "Coun
ty Election” and “The Verdict of the People” we
fave an Invaluable record of the stirring days
when people took their politics more seriously
han they seem to do now.
By this time Bingham was making enough
com his painting to enable him to go to Europe
George Caleb Bingham —
oy Self Portrait
——== "Emigration of .
Daniel Boone and His. Family
to studs After his return some of
his finest portraits another trip
abroad but this time hiz stay was a short one
and in 1560 he was living In Kansas City and
again taking a prominent part in the politics of
Later he made
the state. Despite his Virginia nativity and the
strong Southern sympathy In Missouri, the out-
break of the Civil war found Bingham a staneh
Northern sympathizer and a captain In the
United States Volunteer reserves So there is a
paradox too In the proposal to make the Arrow
Rock home of this Unionist a Confederate shrine,
jut that proposal is more understandable If
there Is taken Into account the fact that one of
his pictures, the famous "Order No. 11." was a
fierce polemic against an injustice suffered by
the Confederates in Missouri at the hands of
gome of Bingham's fellow-Unionists In 1863,
while Bingham was state treasurer, Quantrill and
his gverillas made their famous rald on Law.
rence, Kan, and massacred many of its defense.
less citizens,
In retaliation for this, Brig. Gen. Thomas
Ewing, Jr., who was In command of the military
district of the border with headquarters in Kan-
gas City, issued his “General Order No. 11" call
ing for the concentration of all residents of the
border into certain military centers and the deliv.
ery of their harvested crops there. Those who
could prove their loyalty to the Union cause
would be given permission to remain within the
limits of the military stations but all “rebels”
were to be driven out of the district. All of this
had to te accomplished within 15 days.
It was one of the most drastic military orders
ever issued during the Civil war. Bingham made
a trip from Jefferson City to Kansas City and
protested vehemently against its issuance. But
Ewing was obdurate and the order was executed
ruthlessly and In many cases with unnecessary
brutality, Whereupon Bingham took a vow that
*he would make the author of that order in-
famous to posterity with his pen and brush.”
At the close of the war, Bingham moved to
Independence and there began painting “Order
No. 11.” After it was finished he borrowed $5,000
from his friend, James 8. Rolling, to have the
painting engraved on steel. He had printed
5,000 coples which he sold and for many years
after the Civil war these steel engravings hung
hated memory of Thomas Ewing and his cruel
“Order No. 11."
Ewing had returned to his home In Ohlo after
the war and In 1877 he was a candidate for gov.
ernor. Whereupon Bingham went to Ohlo, taking
his painting with him and exhibiting It in all
the larger cities. He gave lectures on it and
wrote articles for the newspapers addressed to
the voters, denouncing Ewing and calling upon
them to keep such a man from becoming the
chief executive of their state. The result was
that Ewing was defeated. Bingham had kept his
vow, although he did not live long to enjoy his
triumph. He died in 1870 and is buried In the
old Union cemetery in Kansas City,
© by Western Newspaper Union,
According to Dr. Fritz Zwicky. a
physicist associate of Dr. Robert A
Millikan, discoverer of cosmic rays,
end of our whole solar system. None
of us now present need feel alarmed
about it, as It may not occur fur
many millions of years, possibly bil
Hons. But once In a thousand years
some sun--to us only a point of light
explosion, releasing the interior heat,
estimated In our own sun to be an
intensity of 30000000 degrees. In
the case of vur sun that would mean
the Instant conversion of all the
planets and all upon them, if any,
what
past eons of time,
Such exploding suns are knowyp as
SUpernoyas, inary nova being
Doctor Zwicky says
that astronomers are in expectatior
to our vision.
near the Virgo universe by 1837, and
are keenly on the wale
is a tentative theory that
are created or released by
suns and if this phenomenon a
occurs
ray may
()f COUrs oh
gerved
the ac
soe |
pened mans
so long does it take
the earth fron
distances,
The mere
event and mention
Life in the U. 8. A.
ow comes a Hol
like an
ant divorce
of time and the incomprehensible
distance from us of the scene of ae
tion, gives us a better mental con-
ception of the grand universe, com-
posed of innumerable universes, so
overwhelming and so indicative of
the superimmensity of creation, as to
cause us to hesitate in giving too re
strictive a definition of the Creator
of it all.—8t, Louls Globe -Democrat,
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