Leonardo's Holy Child by Fred R. Kline

Author:Fred R. Kline
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus
Published: 2016-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

We were off and running with the early evidence pointing squarely at Bingham, but it remained to be seen if Bingham’s authorship could be corroborated with additional documentary evidence that could make his authorship conclusive. I still could not understand what the painting was all about. All the details offered unmistakable genetic clues to Bingham’s style, yet the tiny scene depicting the capture of a horse thief seemed just too simple to accept. Why such a sharp step back to the style of Thomas Cole? There had to be a deeper story, a more serious purpose, that could further support Bingham’s authorship and bring everything together.

Horse Thief was Bingham’s most extravagant landscape, and he was definitely not a frivolous painter. Nor would he have wasted great effort on a very finished work of minor importance. He did paint a number of small facile landscapes of little distinction, which were offered for low prices at the request of the American Art Union, and, as he said, “to keep the pot boiling.” Horse Thief was definitely not a potboiler. Bingham needed first of all to make a living, but he was also an artist who had steadfast principles and a true and serious belief in American democracy. He could even be classified a Whig politician, a patriot, a no-nonsense Constitutionalist with an almost religious devotion to the law and high moral principles. He often ran for office and once held an elected position as a Missouri state legislator. Throughout his career, he juggled and managed deep commitments to both art and politics. Why, in Horse Thief, would Bingham go to so much trouble painting a masterful landscape and then juxtapose a tiny confusing scene of a prisoner on his way to being hanged, presumably by vigilantes, for stealing horses?

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