Bingham scholar E. Maurice Bloch listed the portraits of Mrs. Ephraim Allison (Ruth McCarty), 1872 (A383) and Tom Edward Allison, 1872, (A384) in his definitive work, George Caleb Bingham Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonne, (University of Missouri Press, 1986). As I worked with lists and images of Bingham portraits, I wondered, wouldn’t Bingham have painted Mr. Ephraim Allison as well? The thought passed, barely noticed. Years later, …
In the mid-1940s, as art historian E. Maurice Bloch researched paintings of George Caleb Bingham, he twice wrote the owner of the portrait John. A. Trigg (1811-1872). Bloch knew that Trigg’s first wife was the artist’s first cousin, Rebecca Bingham (1821-after 1850). He knew that the couple lived in Missouri, in Blackwater Township, not far from the home of the artist and his first wife, …
George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) George Caleb Bingham lived at the edge of civilization after his family moved from Virginia to Missouri Territory in 1819. He saw the native peoples, the trappers and fur traders, and the fishermen. He saw the men who worked the steamboats, the lighters, the wood boats. He saw camp meetings, political stumping, elections, and the verdicts …
