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Fur Traders Descending the Missouri
George Caleb Bingham · Romanticism & Landscape
- Artist
- George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879)
- Date
- c. 1845
- Dimensions
- 73.7 x 92.7 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States
Fur Traders Descending the Missouri shows an old French trader and his son drifting downstream in a dugout canoe on the Missouri river in the early morning mist, a chained black animal, probably a bear cub or fox, seated at the bow.
A closer look
The scene is utterly calm: the water is still and glassy, reflecting the canoe and its passengers, and a soft golden haze veils the wooded shore. The old man, pipe in mouth, steers with his paddle and looks at us suspiciously, while the young man, leaning on the cargo of furs, smiles dreamily. A dead duck lies beside him, and a gun rests on the bundles. The pet at the bow stares at us like a dark silhouette. Bingham recorded a disappearing way of life on the American frontier with poetic serenity.