George Caleb Bingham

During his time in Missouri, Bingham was a member of the Whig Party and ran for different political offices within the state. In 1874, he became president of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners and also Chief of Police. He also accepted the role as the first Professor of Art at the University of Missouri at Columbia, a position that was cut short by his death in 1879. In 1976, a series of 112 figure study sketches by Bingham (which were donated to the St. Louis Mercantile Library by St. Louis Mayor John How in 1868) were on exhibit around the state in an effort to raise enough money for their purchase. To avoid a scenario where they would have to be separated and sold at auction, Missouri’s then-governor, Christopher Bond, organized a trust named Bingham Sketches, Incorporated in the hopes that it could acquire the drawings by and for the state of Missouri. In 1979, the trust officially raised enough money through state-appropriated funds and private donations to purchase them. The works are now kept at the Saint Louis Museum of Art and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. George Caleb Bingham, Mrs. B. W. Clark (Mary Jane Kinney) and Her Brother (Joseph Beeler Kinney?) , 1874. “George Caleb Bingham: Artist File.” Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri Nancy Rash and George Caleb Bingham, The Painting and Politics of George Caleb Bingham (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). “St. Louis Artist Files Index,” Saint Louis Museum of Art, accessed February 24, 2021, George Caleb Bingham, Mrs. B. W. Clark (Mary Jane Kinney) and Her Brother (Joseph Beeler Kinney?) , 1874. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Conserved with funds from the Smithsonian Women's Committee, NPG.79.46. “George Caleb Bingham: Artist File.” Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri Nancy Rash and George Caleb Bingham, The Painting and Politics of George Caleb Bingham (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). “St. Louis Artist Files Index,” Saint Louis Museum of Art, accessed February 24, 2021,