Fishing on the Mississippi
Framed: 39 1/4 × 46 3/4 × 4 3/4 inches (99.7 × 118.75 × 12.07 cm)
American Art-Union, New York, November–December 1851, no. 120.
George Caleb Bingham: The Missouri Artist, 1811–1879, Museum of Modern Art, New York, January 30–March 7, 1935, no. 8 (as Fishing on the Missouri).
A Century of American Landscape Painting, 1800–1900, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, January 19–February 25, 1938 (traveled), no. 23.
Trois Siècles d’Art aux États-Unis, Musée du Jeu de Paume, Paris, May–July 1938, no. 11.
American Painting: 17th-18th-19th-Centuries, Survey of Colonial and Provincial Painting, University Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, February–March 1, 1939, no. 4.
First Exhibition: Art and Artists along the Mississippi, Davenport Municipal Gallery, Iowa, April 4–30, 1940, no. 8.
Romanticism in America; or, an Elegant Exposition of Taste and Fashion from 1812 to 1865, Baltimore Museum of Art, May 10–August 10, 1940, not in cat.
An Exhibition of Great Paintings in Aid of the Canadian Red Cross, Art Gallery of Toronto, November 15–December 15, 1940, no. 76.
Sport in American Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, October 10–December 10, 1944, no. 15.
The World of the Romantic Artist: A Survey of American Culture from 1800 to 1875, Detroit Institute of Arts, December 28, 1944–January 28, 1945, no. 83.
Sports and Adventure in American Art, Milwaukee Art Institute, February 15–March 30, 1947, no. 10.
Painting in the West, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Calif., August 1947, no cat.
Mississippi Panorama, City Art Museum of St. Louis, October 11–November 15, 1949, no. 16 (as Fishing on the Missouri).
Life on the Prairie: The Artist’s Record, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Neb., May 12–July 4, 1954, unnumbered (as Fishing on the Missouri).
The One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, January 15–March 13, 1955, no. 55.
Fine Arts Festival, Kansas State College, Manhattan, April 28–May 8, 1955, unnumbered.
Rediscoveries in American Painting, Cincinnati Art Museum, October 3–November 6, 1955, no. 4.
War, Peace, and Union, Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, October 7–30, 1960, no. 30.
George Caleb Bingham: Sesquicentennial Exhibition, 1811–1961, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., March 16–June 30, 1961 (traveled), no. 13.
Landscape into Art, Atlanta Art Association Galleries, February 6–25, 1962, no. 32.
Nineteenth Century American Painting, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., February 17–March 31, 1974, no cat.
Bingham’s Missouri, Saint Louis Art Museum, September 26, 1975–April 11, 1976 (traveled), no cat.
Kaleidoscope of American Painting: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., December 2, 1977–January 22, 1978, no. 69.
The River: Images of the Mississippi, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, October 3, 1976–January 9, 1977, no. 13.
Genre, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., April 5–May 15, 1983, no. 40A.
George Caleb Bingham, Saint Louis Art Museum, February 22–September 30, 1990 (traveled), unnumbered.
A Centennial Salute to George Caleb Bingham, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, April 5–July 2, 1998, no. 11.
Bingham to Benton: The Midwest as Muse, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., February 5–July 31, 2005, no cat.
Navigating the West: George Caleb Bingham
and the River, Amon
Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX, October 4, 2014–January 4, 2015;
Saint Louis Art Museum, February 22–May 17, 2015; Metropolitan Museum of Art,
June 22–September 20, 2015, no. 29.
Origins: Collecting to Create the Nelson-Atkins, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, August 14, 2021-March 6, 2022.
Bingham painted Fishing on the Mississippi during a brief residence in New York in 1851. Three fishermen, whom Bingham based on earlier drawings, are pictured waiting to provide steamboats with wood for fuel. The warm palette, balanced composition and the figures' downturned gazes create a meditative, even melancholic mood, which reflects Bingham's own mixed feelings about the changing ways of frontier life. By 1850 steamboats were quickly displacing flatboats as the primary mode of river transportation.
To American Art-Union, New York, 1851;
to James C. McGuire, Washington, D.C., 1852;
to B. de Forest, by 1933;
to (Newhouse Galleries, New York, 1933);
to NAMA, 1933.
Catalogue of Pictures and Other Works of Art, the Property of the American Art-Union. To Be Sold at Auction, by David Austen, Jr. at the Gallery, 497 Broadway, on Wednesday, the 15th, Thursday, the 16th, and Friday, the 17th, December 1852. At 11 O’Clock, A.M., no. 53, in Supplementary Bulletin of the American Art-Union, series for 1851 (December 1, 1852), no. 10.
“Sale of the Art-Union Pictures,” New York Tribune, December 16, 1852, 5.
“Sale of Pictures and Other Works of Art—Property of the American Art-Union,” New York Times, December 16, 1852, 3.
“The Art-Union Sale,” Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, December 16, 1852, 2.
“American
Art-Union,” New-York Evening Express,
December 18, 1852, 3.
“American Art Union,” New York Times, December 18, 1852, 6.
Fern Helen Rusk, George Caleb Bingham: The Missouri Artist (Jefferson City, Mo.: Hugh Stephens Co., 1917), 51, 122.
“Fishing on the Mississippi by George Caleb Bingham, 1811–1879,” typescript, after 1929, NAMA curatorial files.
“In Gallery and Studio,” Kansas City Star, March 18, 1933, 4 (as Fishing on the Mississippi River).
“American
Painting,” Art Digest 8 (December 1,
1933), 17.
“The
Acquisitions,” Art Digest 8 (December
1, 1933), 21.
“The
William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art: Complete Catalogue of Paintings and
Drawings,” Art News 32 (December 9,
1933), 28.
Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson
Gallery of Art (Kansas
City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of
Fine Arts, 1933), 122, 136.
“‘Fishing on the Mississippi’ by George Caleb Bingham Acquired for Permanent Nelson Collection,” Kansas City Star, June 11, 1934, 6.
“In Gallery and Studio,” Kansas City Star, March 22, 1935, E1.
“In Gallery and Studio,” Kansas City Star, July 12, 1935, 8 (as Fishing on the Missouri).
George Caleb Bingham: The Missouri Artist, 1811–1879, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1935), pl. 8 (as Fishing on the Missouri).
“Art,” Kansas City Star, August 30, 1936, 10A.
“In
Gallery and Studio,” Kansas City Star,
February 4, 1938, 20.
“A Century of Landscape Painting,” Pictures on Exhibit 1 (February 1938), 9.
A Century of American Landscape Painting,
1800–1900, exh. cat. (New
York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1938), 26.
Trois Siècles d’Art aux États-Unis, exh. cat. (Paris: Musée du Jeu de Paume,
1938), 35.
Missouri Historical Review 33 (1938– 39), opp. 512.
“American Landscape Paintings,” News Flashes (William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) 5 (June 1939), 2.
“American
Group of Landscapes at Art Gallery,” Kansas
City Journal-Post, July 23, 1939, 14.
American Painting: 17th-18th-19th-Centuries;
Survey of Colonial and Provincial Painting (Minneapolis: University Gallery, University of Minnesota,
1939), 36.
A Century of American Landscape Painting, 1800–1900, exh. cat. (Pittsburgh: Carnegie
Institute, 1939), 28.
“Davenport: Art along the Mississippi,” in “Art throughout America,” Art News 38 (April 20, 1940), 18.
Berton Roueche, “Revival of George Caleb Bingham, ‘The Missouri Artist’ Continues,” Kansas City Star, April 26, 1940, D1.
Jane
Watson, “News and Comment,” Magazine of
Art 33 (April 1940), 242.
“Baltimore
with Art and Drama Explores Romanticism in America,” Art Digest 14 (May 15, 1940), 5.
Albert
Christ-Janer, George Caleb Bingham of
Missouri: The Story of an Artist (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company,
1940), 55–57, pl. 5 (as Fishing on the
Missouri).
First Exhibition: Art and Artists along the Mississippi, exh. cat. (Davenport, Iowa: Davenport Municipal Gallery, 1940), unpaginated.
An Exhibition of Great Paintings in Aid of the Canadian Red Cross, exh. cat. (Toronto: Art Gallery of Toronto, 1940), 19, 27.
“Bingham’s ‘Fishing on the Mississippi,’” Kansas City Star, May 4, 1941, 14D.
Gallery Events (William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) 8 (December 1941), unpaginated.
The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2nd ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 149, 155, 166.
Edgar P. Richardson, American Romantic Painting (New York: E. Weyhe, 1944), 26.
Sport in American Art, exh. cat. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts,
1944), 9.
Edgar P. Richardson, “The World of the Romantic Artist: Detroit Review,” Art News 43 (January 15–31, 1945), 20.
Wolfgang Born, “Sources of American Romanticism,” Antiques 48 (November 1945), 275, 276.
James Truslow Adams, ed., Album of American History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945), 363.
Edgar P. Richardson, The World of the Romantic Artist: A Survey of American Culture from 1800 to 1875, exh. cat. (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1945), 29, 34.
“O! The Gallant Fisher’s Life,” Milwaukee Journal, May 18, 1947, Roto sec., unpaginated.
Sports and Adventure in American Art, exh. cat. (Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Institute, 1947), unpaginated.
Winifred Shields, “A Glance back to G. C. Bingham Shows Talent of State Artist,” Kansas City Star, September 23, 1949, 18 (as Fishing on the Missouri).
The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 3rd. ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1949), 201.
Mississippi Panorama, exh. cat., rev. ed. (St. Louis: City Art Museum of St. Louis, 1950), 46, 60–61 (as Fishing on the Missouri).
Albert Christ-Janer, “Artist of the Missouri: George Caleb Bingham,” American Heritage 1 (1950), 18–19 (as Fishing on the Missouri).
“Special Loan Exhibition for Centennial,” Gallery News (William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) 16 (September 1950), unpaginated.
Mary
Bartlett Cowdrey, American Academy of
Fine Arts and American Art-Union Exhibition Record, 1816–1852 (New York:
New-York Historical Society, 1953), 23.
Life on the Prairie: The Artist’s Record,
exh. cat. (Omaha, Neb.: Joslyn Art Museum, 1954), 5.
Lew Larkin, Bingham: Fighting Artist (Kansas City, Mo.: Burton Publishing Company, 1954), 87–89.
“150 Years of the Fine Arts: Pennsylvania School Unfolded US Talents,” LIFE, March 28, 1955, 72.
The One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition, exh. cat. (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1955), 45, 46.
Fine Arts Festival, exh. cat. (Manhattan: Kansas State College, 1955), unpaginated.
Rediscoveries in American Painting, exh. cat. (Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum, 1955), 16.
John Francis McDermott, George Caleb Bingham, River Portraitist (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959), 3, 81–82, 181, 184, 229, 416.
Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 144, 255.
War, Peace, and Union, exh. cat. (San Diego: Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, 1960), 12.
“George Caleb Bingham: Sesquicentennial Exhibition, 1811–1961,” Bulletin (William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) 3 (1961), 16.
Landscape into Art, exh. cat. (Atlanta: Atlanta Art Association,
1962), unpaginated.
John McCoubrey, American Tradition in Painting (New York: George Braziller, 1963), 33–34, no. 30.
Lew
Larkin, “Art World Has ‘Discovered’ Bingham and Many of His Works Await the
Finding,” Kansas City Star, June 11,
1966, 16.
George Caleb Bingham, 1811–1879, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: National Collection of Fine Arts by Smithsonian Institution Press, 1967), 91.
E. Maurice Bloch, George Caleb Bingham: A Catalogue Raisonné (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 85–86, no. A221.
E. Maurice Bloch, George Caleb Bingham: The Evolution of an Artist (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 104, 106, 108–10, 115.
Four American Painters (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1969), 19, pl. 8 (as Fishing on the Missouri).
Ross E.
Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook
of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary
Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed.
(Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum
of Fine Arts, 1973), 174, 250.
“Gifts
of $50,000 for Bingham Art,” Kansas City
Times, February 19, 1975, 1C.
“Bingham’s Missouri,” Gallery Events (William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts), October 1975, unpaginated.
E. Maurice Bloch, The Drawings of George Caleb Bingham, with a Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1975), 178.
Albert Christ-Janer, George Caleb Bingham: Frontier Painter of Missouri (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975), pl. 55.
The River: Images of the Mississippi, exh. cat. (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1976), 31 and checklist.
Kaleidoscope of American Painting: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. exh. cat. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1977), 58.
John Francis McDermott, “Artist- Discoverers of the Mississippi,” Design Quarterly 101–2 (1977), 30–31.
George Ehrlich, “George Caleb Bingham as Ethnographer: A Variant View of His Genre Works,” American Studies 19 (Fall 1978), 43, 50, 52;
Ross E. Taggart, “American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri,” Antiques 122 (November 1982), 1031–33.
Genre, exh. cat. (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1983), 5, 16, 28.
E. Maurice Bloch, The Paintings of George Caleb Bingham: A Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986), 13, 88, 196, 273, no. A252.
Alfred Kazin, A Writer’s America: Landscape in Literature (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), 94, 233.
Michael Edward Shapiro et al., George Caleb Bingham, exh. cat. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, in association with Saint Louis Art Museum, 1990), 159, 166, 176.
Nancy Rash, The Painting and Politics of George Caleb Bingham (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 246n67.
Henry Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991), 65–66.
Tom Benton’s Missouri and George Caleb Bingham, videocassette, produced and directed by David McAllister (University of Missouri, Rolla, 1991).
Colleen J. Sheehy, “American Angling: The Rise of Urbanism and the Romance of the Rod and Reel,” in Hard at Play: Leisure in America, 1840–1940, ed. Kathryn Grover (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 81.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collections. 6th ed. (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 228, 234.
Michael Edward Shapiro, George Caleb Bingham (New York: Harry N. Abrams, in association with the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1993), 69, 113.
Nancy Skarmeas, The Heritage of America (Nashville: Ideals Publications, 1994), 128; In Search of the Oregon Trail, videocassette, produced and directed by Michael Farrell (Nebraska ETV and Oregon Public Broadcasting, 1996).
A Centennial Salute to George Caleb Bingham, exh. cat. (Columbia: State Historical Society of Missouri, 1998), 2, 7.
“George Caleb Bingham Symposium: A Lesson on Miracles and ‘Fishing on the Mississippi,’” Friends of Arrow Rock 14 (Summer 1998), unpaginated.
John Wilmerding, Compass and Clock: Defining Moments in American Culture (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999), 120.
John McCoubrey, American Tradition in Painting (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 31, 73.
William H. Gerdts, “Before Winslow Homer: The Art of Fishing in the United States,” in Winslow Homer: Artist and Angler, ed. Patricia Junker with Sarah Burns, exh. cat. (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum; San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2002), 207–8.
Jason T. Busch, Christopher Monkhouse, and Janet L. Whitmore, Currents of Change: Art and Life along the Mississippi River, 1850–1861, exh. cat. (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2004), 19.
Margaret C. Conrads, “Bingham to Benton: The Midwest as Muse,” American Art Review 17 (January–February 2005), 150–52.
Paul C. Nagel, George Caleb Bingham: Missouri’s Famed Painter and Forgotten Politician (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005), 81, 87, 94.
Margaret C. Conrads, ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (Kansas City, Mo.: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007), 1:114–119, 2:50–52.
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 162.
Arne Neset, Arcadian Waters and Wanton Seas: The Iconology of Waterscapes in Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Culture (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 113.
Elaine Warner, “K. C. Masterpieces,” Nichols Hills News (October 2010), 22–26, 25.
Margaret C. Conrads, "Bingham@200: A Bicentennial Celebration," Antiques and Fine Art 11, no. 1 (Spring 2011), 193–199.
Nenette
Luarca-Shoaf, et al, Navigating the West:
George Caleb Bingham and the River (Fort Worth, Tx.: Amon Carter Museum
of American Art; St. Louis: Saint Louis Art Museum; and New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2014), 64–65, 100, 117–118, 159, 169, pl. 43.
