George Caleb Bingham, The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846. Oil on canvas, 38 1/8” x 48 1/2” (96.8 x 123.2 cm) Coll: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art.
Think about how your home is decorated. What posters and pictures do you have on your walls? During the mid-19th century, this painting by George Caleb Bingham, entitled The Jolly Flatboatmen, was turned into an extremely popular black & white print that sold in the thousands. Let’s take a brief look at the imagery of this work, and why it might have found appeal among people across the U.S.
After rowing their boat upstream and loading it with cargo, the boatmen in this idealized scene of the American West now leisurely float downriver, enjoying music and dancing after a long day’s work. This iconic image, which was very well known during its own era, captures and immortalizes life on the American frontier in the early days of westward expansion. The inland Mississippi and Missouri rivers, important gateways to the West for pioneers and explorers, were also vital for transportation and trade, stimulating economic growth and cultural change for the young nation. Bingham’s river scenes were widely circulated in northeastern cities, promoting a romanticized sense of the landscape and inhabitants of the burgeoning American West. However, by the time the artist painted The Jolly Flatboatmen in 1846, the idyllic world of the American frontier was quickly changing, and flatboats, like the one pictured here, were rapidly being replaced by faster and more efficient steam-powered vessels.
*Select facts derived from the www.NGA.gov collection object page: The Jolly Flatboatmen.