Day Seven

National Great Rivers Museum 4

国立大河川博物館 4

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The Three Great Rivers have motivated the talented to the creation of uniquely American arts and music. This board shows the signature works of four painters who represent American river paintings.

The leftmost work is titled Snowy Heron or White Egret. This was painted by John James Audubon in 1835 (which other sources say is more likely to be 1832). He was born in France, and moved to the U.S. in 1803. Accidentally in that same year, Napoleon sold the whole French Territory of the New World to the then U.S. President Thomas Jefferson at the discount price of 18 dollars per square mile. Audubon kept painting American birds until his death. The truth is, the picture above was not painted on or near any of the Three Great Rivers, but was worked near Charleston, South Carolina. Thanks to his great contribution to American Ornithology, there are many parks and facilities now in the U.S. that are named after him.

The picture on the second from left was painted by George Caleb Bingham. He was born in Virginia in 1811 and moved to Franklin, Missouri, in 1819. In 1823, after his father's death, the Bingham family sold their land and moved to what is now called Arrow Rock, Missouri. They started a new farm in the help of the deceased father's brother. At 16, George Bingham began to work as an apprentice to a cabinet maker in Boonville, a nearby port town. By the age of 19 he had already worked as a portraitist, earning $20 apiece. By 1838 he had established his studio in St. Louis while he kept his home in Arrow Rock. Between 1838 and 1845, he went to east for studying art. He portrayed John Quincy Adams while he stayed in Washington DC. In 1848, after returning to St. Louis, he decided to run for election as a Whig to be a member of the Missouri House of Representatives. He won the seat by a decisive margin. He actively opposed the pro-slavery movements. Between 1856 and 1859 he stayed in Europe with his family. After the civil war began, he raised troops and fought against Clayborne Jackson, the then-Missouri Governor and a pro-Confederates. In 1861 Union forces routed the Confederates at Boonville two times, and the pro-Union politician Hamilton Gable was elected the new Missouri Governor. Gable appointed Bingham the State Treasurer of Missouri, and Bingham worked hard to win over the Confederates in Missouri. Bingham died in 1879 in Kansas City, Missouri, and was buried at Kansas City's Union Cemetery.

The third picture from left is the work by Henry Lewis. Its theme is the Piasa Bird painted on a big rock cliff by the Mississippi River (Piasa is pronounced as [PY-a-saw]). Henry Lewis is a self-taught painter in 19th century. He was born in Kent County, England, in 1819. He was moved with his family to Boston, Massachusetts, about 1833. He then moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and began to work as a carpenter and scenery painter. In his time in America, what is called moving panoramas on roll papers became fad, and Lewis devoted himself into this new style of paintings. In this style, a painter painted a lot of pictures on a very long roll of paper, which was then unrolled before the audience so that they enjoyed seeing changes of scenes like we now enjoy motion pictures. The Piasa Bird is one favorite theme of many wall paintings that were made by a group of the Illini tribe who inhabited along the Mississippi River. Long before Europeans reached this region, the tribe had painted various shapes of the imaginery bird on rock walls of caves and cliffs along the river. The replica of one of such paintings is seen on the rock wall right next to a quarry, west of Alton, Illinois.

The rightmost picture, titled Eating Up The Lights, was painted by Gary Lucy in 1994. Gary Lucy is a comtemporary artist of history painting. He has produced a lot of river scenes that are based upon historical anecdotes relating to the Great Rivers. The note below the picture reads that, in the era of steamboats, "boatmen [anchored] floating lights to mark a safe path. When the boat [followed], it [was] said to eat up the lights." Thereof came the title of the picture. Lucy lives in Washington, Missouri. His home is just a block away from the Missouri River.

Day Seven continues to the next page.

七日目は次のページに続きます。