George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879), The Jolly Flat Boatman

George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879)  The Jolly Flat Boatman c. 1847  Published Exclusively for the Members of the Year  Engraving with original hand-coloring Engraved by T Doney  Image size: 21 ½ x 25” Frame size: 31 ¾ x 35 ½” One of the leading American genre painters of the mid-nineteenth century, George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) created some of the most memorable views of American small town life.  Bingham was fascinated by the democratic process and by the ways in which it permeated everyday existence in communities far removed from the big cities.  Inspired perhaps by scenes he had witnessed personally, Bingham depicted the days when ballots were handwritten and politicians addressed the local public from soap boxes or tree stumps.   Nostalgic and sentimental, Bingham's views were perhaps not fully realistic visions of small town American life in the 19th century, but they did represent the ideal of a rural, innocent, and peaceful existence for which so many late 19th-century A