George Caleb Bingham's Rocky Mountains, a landscape discovery

  Kossey examines George Caleb Bingham's Rocky Mountains. The painting 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. Rocky Mountains also employs...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Magazine antiques (1971) 2014-11, Vol.181 (6), p.118
Main Author: Kossey, Paul A
Format: Magazinearticle
Language:English
Subjects:
Bingham, George Caleb (1811-79)
Visual artists
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Summary:  Kossey examines George Caleb Bingham's Rocky Mountains. The painting 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. Rocky Mountains also employs techniques adopted by Bingham as a result of his stays in Dusseldorf 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 Oct 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.
ISSN:0161-9284