An Artist’s Revenge: Missouri's George Caleb Bingham

THE NEW YORK TIMES 
By Nicole Etcheson

“Order No. 11,” by George Caleb Bingham | State Historical Society of Missouri

MISSOURI---By the time the Civil War broke out, the Missouri artist and politician George Caleb Bingham had, in the words of the art historian Joan Stack, “achieved national fame as a quintessentially American genre painter.” Art historians have traced the connections between images in “Order No. 11” and depictions of religious themes. The black man and boy resemble representations of Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden. The slave woman holding her swooning mistress evokes a Renaissance Pietà, and the kneeling daughter resembles images of kneeling saints. Professor Rash argues that Bingham, for his composition, also drew from magazine depictions of Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence, including the placement of buildings and the image of the kneeling woman. In Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, the woman kneels over the body of her slain husband as the attack on Lawrence rages around her. [link]

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