The Jolly Flat Boat Men
Medium
Mezzotint and engraving with etching
Dimensions
21-1/2 x 26-1/2 in. (54.6 x 67.3 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gertrude and Thomas Jefferson Mumford Collection, Gift of Dorothy Quick Mayer, 1942
Accession Number
42.119.68
Tags
Art Historical Context
This 1847 print, created through mezzotint, engraving, and etching, reproduces George Caleb Bingham’s celebrated painting of the same title. Bingham, a leading American genre painter, captured the lively world of flatboatmen navigating the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers during the era of westward expansion. The scene shows rugged men dancing, playing fiddles and other instruments, and enjoying rare moments of camaraderie on the water, evoking the democratic spirit and frontier energy of mid-nineteenth-century America. Published by the American Art Union in New York, the print made Bingham’s ...