Fewer than half the recorded landscapes in E. Maurice Bloch’s catalogue raisonné of the paintings of George Caleb Bingham have been located, making the discovery of the unre¬corded painting in Figure 1 especially noteworthy.1 The painting is in excellent condition, evidently having never been removed from its original frame while in the possession of descendants of a sibling of Bingham’s second wife, Eliza K. Thomas, until about 1992.2
Above: rocky Mountains by George Caleb Bingham (1811 – 1879), c. 1872. Oil on canvas, 14 by 18 inches. Private collection; photograph by Pictex Studio.
The composition reflects Bingham’s long established approach to landscape painting, derived from European sources and practices that were commonly employed by nineteenth-century American landscape painters. As Ross Taggart wrote in the exhibition catalogue for the Bingham sesquicentennial in 1961, “Even in his mountainous landscapes, the cliffs and peaks emerge from the plane of the spectator and grow up structurally before his eyes. Bingham does not look down on his mountains or valleys, nor does he have them tower above the spectator in awesome grandeur.”3
Rocky Mountains also employs techniques adopted by Bingham as a result of his stays in Düsseldorf in the late 1850s-clearer light, sharper edges, and more attention to detail than seen in his earlier landscapes with their vaporous passages.
The work dates to about 1872, when Bingham returned to landscape painting after abandoning the genre for most of the previous decade. His revived interest may have accompanied treatment for his chronic respiratory problems in Colorado from August through October of 1872, where the Rocky Mountains provided an opportunity to paint panoramic landscapes in the manner of such artists as Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt. The timing was especially attractive given the public’s fascination with the American West fueled by the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.
The relatively small painting, previously untitled, has been named Rocky Mountains to reflect its evocative connection to Bierstadt’s monumental Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bierstadt’s painting was well known through widely distributed steel engravings (Fig. 3), and it is reasonable to assume that Bingham himself owned a copy, since he used prints for study and the development of compositional techniques throughout his career.4
Bingham probably painted Rocky Mountains as a study or preparatory exercise for other planned Colorado landscapes, employing compositional techniques, coloring, tonality, and atmospheric effects in keeping with his own personal and artistic sensibilities, which were more subdued than Bierstadt’s. Bingham invites the viewer to be a participant in his scene, not just an awestruck or curious observer. One can imagine joining the jaunty prospector on a hike into the mountains, where the peaks are dramatic, but not especially threatening or overwhelming. This welcoming intimacy is achieved by lining up the viewer’s perspective with the prospector’s, and by having the prospector’s path illuminated and moving into the scene, rather than shaded and parallel to it-as though a visual boundary to be crossed. The reflecting pool and the openings in the rocks that provide access to it from the path are enveloping shapes that also encourage the viewer to join the prospector in the picture. Such involvement with the scene occurs in Bingham’s river paintings as well, where the viewer is seemingly invited on board to join the boatmen in their activities.5
The prospector (Fig. 7), in his red jacket, also provides a measure of scale in the picture, akin to Bingham’s use of lone fishermen in red jackets in earlier landscapes. He serves other purposes as well. The intense reflection of white light from his hat helps provide a visual balance to the brightness of the nearby pool, the light from the sky, and the snow in the distant mountains. Moreover, the prospector refers to a historical period that had faded by the time Bingham went west in 1872-the Colorado Gold Rush and the so-called Fifty-Niners with their famous motto “Pike’s Peak or Bust!”
That famed mountain was the subject of at least two large Colorado landscapes by Bingham, both titled View of Pike’s Peak and assigned the date “1872?” in Bloch’s catalogue raisonné.6 Both include specific compositional elements and visual effects exhibited in Rocky Mountains, suggesting that it may have been among Bingham’s preparatory exercises for those works.
he larger of the two paintings (see Fig. 4) was destroyed or lost and is only known from a black-and-white photograph first reproduced and discussed by Fern Helen Rusk in the earliest published monograph on the artist in 1917.7 The composition reflects that of Rocky Mountains, but on a much larger scale.
Compositional and visual effects in Rocky Mountains are also exhibited in Bingham’s extant View of Pike’s Peak (Fig. 2), which reflects his natural sensibilities more than does the lost version, which appears to have been a singular attempt to compete in Bierstadt’s sublime arena. The landscape includes a figure with his dog, who both provides a measure of scale and attracts the viewer to participate in the scene. Attention is drawn to the small figures by a shaft of light illuminating their path and by a tiny, but intense, reflection off the hiker’s hat-devices also employed with the prospector in Rocky Mountains.
Bingham’s small Mountain Landscape (called Colorado Mountain Landscape by Bloch; Fig. 5) also mirrors features of Rocky Mountains, including a foreground pool of limpid water and dramatic, reddish-brown mountains rising behind it. Patricia Trenton and Peter Hassrick suggest that Mountain Landscape was possibly a study for the lost painting of Pike’s Peak, owing to its foreground pool of water and the form of its central mountain.8 An outward directed shaft of light on the water draws the viewer into the scene, but unlike in Rocky Mountains and the two paintings of Pike’s Peak there is no easy path for the viewer to enter the scene, nor does the work contain a human presence. As a result it projects a sense of a remote and quiet wilderness, rather than the more intimate, welcoming scene presented in Rocky Mountains.
Bingham painted only a few large Colorado landscapes, but Fern Rusk cites a letter written by his son, Rollins, indicating that a great many preparatory works, later destroyed or lost, existed shortly before the artist’s death. The letter also notes that in 1902 four Colorado landscapes were in the possession of Mrs. James M. Piper, née Mary B. Thomas, a sister of Bingham’s second wife, Eliza K. Thomas.9 In his catalogue raisonné Bloch suggests that Indian Encampment (which he calls Landscape with an Indian Encampment; Fig. 6) is one of those four Colorado land-scapes. If so, Rocky Mountains is almost certainly another, for recent research reveals that the two paintings descended together through Mary Ella Thomas, a niece of Mrs. Piper and one of the beneficiaries of her will. The Amon Carter’s View of Pike’s Peak is possibly a third, since it descended through Mary Ella Thomas’s brother William E. Thomas, also one of the beneficiaries of Mrs. Piper’s will.10
Rocky Mountains may be one of the earliest of Bingham’s paintings related to his visits to Colorado in the 1870s. Even though it is a fully developed, finely finished work, it was likely never exhibited publicly owing to its probable role as a preparatory work for his later, much larger, paintings of Pike’s Peak. Nonetheless, the heretofore unrecorded work is a rare discovery and an important addition to the artist’s extant body of landscape paintings.
1 There are 456 catalogue entries reliably ascribed to Bingham in E. Maurice Bloch, The Paintings of George Caleb Bingham: A Catalogue Raisonné (University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1986). Of these, forty-one are listed as landscapes
with twenty-six of them designated as “Present location unknown.” 2 I am indebted to Anne Walker for her initiative and skillful research that unlocked the provenance of the painting. It was purchased from an octogenarian at a Fort Worth estate sale about 1992, but it has only recently been established that the seller was a great-great niece of Eliza K. Thomas, the second wife of George Caleb Bingham. The painting had descended through successive generations of the family until its sale. 3 Ross E. Taggart’s introduction in “George Caleb Bingham: Sesquicentennial Exhibition, 1811-1961,” Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 3 (1961), p. 8. 4 Margaret C. Conrads notes that despite Bingham’s ready use of such sources, he was no mere copyist, but “created his own invention from his collection of visual images” (American Paintings to 1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Margaret C. Conrads [Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., 2007], p. 123). 5 See Michael Edward Shapiro “The River Paintings,” in George Caleb Bingham (Saint Louis Art Museum and Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1990), pp. 141-173. 6 Bloch, George Caleb Bingham, p. 232. An extensive discussion of the two paintings, including their different vantage points, is given in Patricia Trenton and Peter H. Hassrick, The Rocky Mountains: A Vision for Artists of the Nineteenth Century (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1983), pp. 239-244. 7 Fern Helen Rusk, George Caleb Bingham: The Missouri Artist (Hugh Stephens Co., Jefferson City, Mo., 1917), pp. 95-97. 8 Trenton and Hassrick, The Rocky Mountains, p. 239. 9 Rusk, George Caleb Bingham, p. 97. 10 The fourth has not been identified, but Mountain Landscape is probably not it, since according to Bloch’s catalogue raisonné that painting was believed presented to Amanda Petronella Austin, a pupil of Bingham’s at the University of Missouri.
