George Caleb Bingham, Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845I think I've mentioned that my favorite book id The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and though this paiting precedes the novel by a good 40 years, it evokes much the same spirit with which Twain infuses his narrative. This paintings is one off the earliest by an American artist where the human figures start to outgrow their surroundings. Much of the previous generation of American paiters placed humans in a clearly subservient or inferior place in relation to nature, emphazising the power of the environment in shaping (and often limiting) human endeavors. But with the opening of the west (this image is contemporaneous with the heavy migration along the Oregon Trail), it was becoming more and more evident that man was shaping the environment to his own ends, and so they were portrayed as in command of the landscape rather than being dwarfed by it. All of that places this painting in an interesting historical context, but to raise an immediate question about the image-- what is the animal seemingly tied to the prow of the boat? It looks like a cat, but why would you need to tie up a cat? If it's some wild animal, I guess that it suggests a degree of domestication consistent with the theme outlined above, but that doesn't necessarily reveal what it is. If you have any ideas, feel free to put them into the comments.
2 comments:
Looks like a cat to me. But what makes you think he is tied up? That line behind him looks more like a continuation of a falling branch from the island (?) in the background.
I like this painting, too. I like the idea that a couple of lonely fur traders take thei cat along for the trip.
I think its tied up because in the actual painting, the line running from the animals neck is a different shade/color than the branch in the background. Plus, I'm convinced that an artist doesn't put things in without a reason for including them, and the leash on an otherwise wild animal hints at domestication in a pretty clear way. Another example of that, which I didn't mention in the post is the apparent half-breed features of the young man, suggesting another type of domestication with respect to the native populations. I think all those things are consistent with a message of bringing "the west" under the control of Euro/American civilization. But, I'll grant that that is just an interpretation.
Dr. John
Post a Comment