What do you think?
Rate this book
Paintbox on the Frontier; The Life and Time of George Caleb Bingham
biography of the artist Bingham
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
6 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 18, 2023
Back circa 2000, I read and greatly enjoyed Alberta Wilson Constant's Miller Girls trilogy (Those Miller Girls! is the first and probably the best). This era was, for me, the dawn of browsing on the internet so of course I sought out other books by Constant. What I wanted was more fiction in the vein of The Miller Girls, but a listing on eBay in early 2001 for this biography for young people (the book is published by Crowell, the same children's imprint that brought out Constant's other juveniles) of the American painter George Caleb Bingham caught my eye. The seller had written in the description that she had a personal story to tell about the author that she'd share with the winner of this signed copy. Even though I still wasn't terribly interested in actually reading Paintbox on the Frontier, my curiosity was piqued, and I went ahead and placed a bid (starting price $6.99), and being the only bidder, won the auction.
I printed out the email from the seller in which she discussed payment arrangements and briefly described her personal connection with Constant. The book was inscribed to the seller's sister, "To [the sister's name], Great-great granddaughter of one of Bingham's subjects - and may she take pleasure in the story, Alberta Wilson Constant." The seller wrote that the portrait of her great great grandfather painted by Bingham was still (at that date) hanging in her parents' house.
Now this is interesting enough, and I'm sure that having this printout tucked in the book adds some sort of value (though alas, probably not great financial value) but what's funny is that when I read this email for the first time in two decades what really amazed me is what a snapshot it was of the earliest days of eBay. Sellers and buyers had to contact each other using their regular email addresses* (mine was my work address!) to arrange payment, and I habitually sent out checks in the mail to sellers, a number of whom commented on my thoughtfulness in including a printout detailing the particulars of the transaction so that they knew what I was paying for! There was no buy it now option, and no way of paying instantly, and most amazing of all, USPS priority mail shipping from Missouri to New York was $3.95!
So all these years the book sat unread on my shelf, and because of the inscription survived a move which involved a massive book purge. Now I'm at another point in my life where I'm contemplating a downsizing of my collection, so I picked it up wondering if I should keep it. I went ahead and actually read it, and now at last I'll talk about the actual book.
George Caleb Bingham was a self taught artist who, though born in Virginia, grew up in Missouri, his family having moved to the territory when it was not yet a state and the waters of the Missouri River were still plied by many groups of Indians and French fur traders. He witnessed (and later participated in) all of the state's early history. Starting as an itinerant portrait painter, he grew in technical accomplishment, and became famous mostly as a painter of "genre" scenes - in his case this meant frontier life on the riverfront -- which were popular in a nation very enthusiastic about its own Westward expansion, although some Eastern art critics found the subject matter "vulgar," and by the time of Bingham's death, the world he had painted no longer really existed. His most famous painting is the one pictured on the cover of this biography, "Fur Traders descending the Missouri."** Although I was moderately interested in the book, I found that it sat awkwardly in a limbo of being not quite a work for children nor a work for adults. It's very text heavy, and goes deeply into many historical details I don't think most children would find interesting, yet it doesn't go deeply enough to satisfy an adult taste, and although the settlement of lands occupied by Indians, slavery and the Civil War are all mentioned, there's a bland lack of nuance in the presentation of these topics. Bingham briefly fought in the war on the Union side, and Constant tells us often how passionate he was in his pro-union sentiments, but curiously, tells us nothing about how he felt about slavery. In any case, were a biography of Bingham to be published for children today (an unlikely concept to start with!) it would have color images and info-graphics on every page, and not consist of 184 solid pages of text. Honestly, I would probably have enjoyed such a book more than this one -- if I wanted to delve deeply into the artist's life and times, I'd read a grown up book.
So my rating is 2.5 stars rounded up, and I'm sure I'll never reread Paintbox on the Frontier. Should I keep it? I don't really want to, but I don't like the idea of sending someone's presentation copy of any book on an uncertain voyage that will most likely end in a landfill. So, Kristen, if you (or your sister?) should ever happen to read this review, and you decide that you'd like to have your family heirloom back (keeping in mind that the book's dust jacket was a ripped mess at the time I received it) leave me a comment to get in touch, and I'll send it back free of charge at book rate (but the offer isn't open indefinitely, because that's just not realistic!)
*An early eBay anecdote unrelated to this book: Sometime in 2002-2003, a friend living far away told me via an email (we were regular online pen pals at the time) that she'd bought her wedding dress on eBay, but didn't share a link. I went on the site and simply by plugging her personal email address into some field somewhere, was able to pull up a page revealing her user name and detailing everything she'd bought, including the dress. Wow. It was a beautiful dress.
**This is my favorite of his paintings, but when I saw it in real life with my mother (the Met had a special Bingham exhibition in 2015 which coincided with one of my kid's graduations), we were both deeply disappointed that the black animal on the boat when seen up close in person is clearly a bear cub, and not the black cat we'd both though it was our whole lives. Oddly, Constant says that it's impossible to tell what kind of animal it is, and that this was probably intentional on Bingham's part. Maybe she never saw the painting in real life??
I printed out the email from the seller in which she discussed payment arrangements and briefly described her personal connection with Constant. The book was inscribed to the seller's sister, "To [the sister's name], Great-great granddaughter of one of Bingham's subjects - and may she take pleasure in the story, Alberta Wilson Constant." The seller wrote that the portrait of her great great grandfather painted by Bingham was still (at that date) hanging in her parents' house.
Now this is interesting enough, and I'm sure that having this printout tucked in the book adds some sort of value (though alas, probably not great financial value) but what's funny is that when I read this email for the first time in two decades what really amazed me is what a snapshot it was of the earliest days of eBay. Sellers and buyers had to contact each other using their regular email addresses* (mine was my work address!) to arrange payment, and I habitually sent out checks in the mail to sellers, a number of whom commented on my thoughtfulness in including a printout detailing the particulars of the transaction so that they knew what I was paying for! There was no buy it now option, and no way of paying instantly, and most amazing of all, USPS priority mail shipping from Missouri to New York was $3.95!
So all these years the book sat unread on my shelf, and because of the inscription survived a move which involved a massive book purge. Now I'm at another point in my life where I'm contemplating a downsizing of my collection, so I picked it up wondering if I should keep it. I went ahead and actually read it, and now at last I'll talk about the actual book.
George Caleb Bingham was a self taught artist who, though born in Virginia, grew up in Missouri, his family having moved to the territory when it was not yet a state and the waters of the Missouri River were still plied by many groups of Indians and French fur traders. He witnessed (and later participated in) all of the state's early history. Starting as an itinerant portrait painter, he grew in technical accomplishment, and became famous mostly as a painter of "genre" scenes - in his case this meant frontier life on the riverfront -- which were popular in a nation very enthusiastic about its own Westward expansion, although some Eastern art critics found the subject matter "vulgar," and by the time of Bingham's death, the world he had painted no longer really existed. His most famous painting is the one pictured on the cover of this biography, "Fur Traders descending the Missouri."** Although I was moderately interested in the book, I found that it sat awkwardly in a limbo of being not quite a work for children nor a work for adults. It's very text heavy, and goes deeply into many historical details I don't think most children would find interesting, yet it doesn't go deeply enough to satisfy an adult taste, and although the settlement of lands occupied by Indians, slavery and the Civil War are all mentioned, there's a bland lack of nuance in the presentation of these topics. Bingham briefly fought in the war on the Union side, and Constant tells us often how passionate he was in his pro-union sentiments, but curiously, tells us nothing about how he felt about slavery. In any case, were a biography of Bingham to be published for children today (an unlikely concept to start with!) it would have color images and info-graphics on every page, and not consist of 184 solid pages of text. Honestly, I would probably have enjoyed such a book more than this one -- if I wanted to delve deeply into the artist's life and times, I'd read a grown up book.
So my rating is 2.5 stars rounded up, and I'm sure I'll never reread Paintbox on the Frontier. Should I keep it? I don't really want to, but I don't like the idea of sending someone's presentation copy of any book on an uncertain voyage that will most likely end in a landfill. So, Kristen, if you (or your sister?) should ever happen to read this review, and you decide that you'd like to have your family heirloom back (keeping in mind that the book's dust jacket was a ripped mess at the time I received it) leave me a comment to get in touch, and I'll send it back free of charge at book rate (but the offer isn't open indefinitely, because that's just not realistic!)
*An early eBay anecdote unrelated to this book: Sometime in 2002-2003, a friend living far away told me via an email (we were regular online pen pals at the time) that she'd bought her wedding dress on eBay, but didn't share a link. I went on the site and simply by plugging her personal email address into some field somewhere, was able to pull up a page revealing her user name and detailing everything she'd bought, including the dress. Wow. It was a beautiful dress.
**This is my favorite of his paintings, but when I saw it in real life with my mother (the Met had a special Bingham exhibition in 2015 which coincided with one of my kid's graduations), we were both deeply disappointed that the black animal on the boat when seen up close in person is clearly a bear cub, and not the black cat we'd both though it was our whole lives. Oddly, Constant says that it's impossible to tell what kind of animal it is, and that this was probably intentional on Bingham's part. Maybe she never saw the painting in real life??
Displaying 1 of 1 review