County Election
County Election
1852
Hand-colored engraving
22 1/8 x 30 1/8 in. (56.2 x 76.5 cm)
Hand-colored engraving after George Caleb Bingham.
Election day on the steps of a Missouri courthouse: candidates press tickets on voters, an immigrant swears he has not voted elsewhere, a Revolutionary War veteran comes down the steps and two boys play mumblety-peg. Engraved by John Sartain after Bingham's painting of 1851–52, now in the Saint Louis Art Museum; published by Goupil & Co., New York, 1854.
The first of Bingham's three Election Series paintings, followed by Stump Speaking and The Verdict of the People. Bingham himself ran for the Missouri legislature in 1846.
George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879)
George Caleb Bingham was born in Augusta County, Virginia, and grew up in Franklin and Arrow Rock, Missouri. Largely self-taught, he began as a portrait painter, with brief study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1838. Between about 1845 and 1860 he painted the river and political scenes that made him the defining painter of antebellum Missouri, among them Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, The County Election and Stump Speaking. He worked in Düsseldorf from 1856 to 1859. Bingham was also active in public life, serving in the Missouri legislature, as state treasurer during the Civil War and as adjutant general, and he became the first professor of art at the University of Missouri. He died in Kansas City in 1879.
Election day on the steps of a Missouri courthouse: candidates press tickets on voters, an immigrant swears he has not voted elsewhere, a Revolutionary War veteran comes down the steps and two boys play mumblety-peg. Engraved by John Sartain after Bingham's painting of 1851–52, now in the Saint Louis Art Museum; published by Goupil & Co., New York, 1854.
The first of Bingham's three Election Series paintings, followed by Stump Speaking and The Verdict of the People. Bingham himself ran for the Missouri legislature in 1846.
George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879)
George Caleb Bingham was born in Augusta County, Virginia, and grew up in Franklin and Arrow Rock, Missouri. Largely self-taught, he began as a portrait painter, with brief study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1838. Between about 1845 and 1860 he painted the river and political scenes that made him the defining painter of antebellum Missouri, among them Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, The County Election and Stump Speaking. He worked in Düsseldorf from 1856 to 1859. Bingham was also active in public life, serving in the Missouri legislature, as state treasurer during the Civil War and as adjutant general, and he became the first professor of art at the University of Missouri. He died in Kansas City in 1879.
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