KATHRYN EARNHART | The Butlers Two Bingham paintings on exhibit

Now on loan to The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown are works by the well-known American painter George Caleb Bingham from the collection of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo. The two paintings, in the Butler's Cushwa Gallery on the main floor, depict life on the Mississippi, a theme for which the artist is well known. The loan is part of a collection-sharing venture between the two museums -- the Butler Institute has lent its masterwork, "Snap the Whip" by Winslow Homer, to the Nelson Atkins Museum for inclusion in an exhibition titled "Winslow Homer and the Critics: Forging a National Art in the 1870s." This premiere exhibition will be in Kansas City until May 6. The Butler's Winslow Homer painting will also be at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art when "Winslow Homer and the Critics" opens there this summer.
Digital image created: In anticipation of the loan of "Snap the Whip," one of the museum's most beloved works, Butler Director Dr. Louis Zona enlisted the help of an Akron company, Digital Color Imaging, which reproduced on canvas a fine art gicl & eacute;e digital image of the Homer painting. The digital work is also in the Butler's Cushwa Gallery.
"What a wonderful opportunity for our community to see the result of such an extraordinary level of technology which was able to reproduce this Butler masterpiece with such detail as to literally fool our eye," Zona said. "This digital print is in itself a technical masterpiece well worth seeing."
Gicl & eacute;e, a French word meaning "to spray or to squirt," is the latest most accurate method of reproducing fine art on paper and canvas. These reproductions are produced one at a time and can take several hours to edit. The process uses special archival inks that last from 80 to 100 years.
DCI commissioned a noted Akron photographer, Mark Braun, who donated his services, to photograph the painting. A complete Macintosh computer system was set up in the Butler galleries so that DCI technician Andy Liptak could immediately analyze the digital image.
At the Akron facility, Liptak and DCI president Dave Welner, along with scanner operator Jeff Myers, produced samples of the Homer painting on canvas, and then compared them to "Snap the Whip." The final print was produced after the samples were approved.
Bingham exhibit: George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) of Missouri was the first major American painter to work west of the Mississippi, and he and William Sidney Mount are considered the two most important American genre painters of the pre-Civil War period. Bingham's fame rests chiefly on his renditions of two subjects, frontier politics and the river life of the West -- subjects presented in the two paintings on loan from the Nelson Atkins Museum.
Bingham had a technical facility for painting that he developed over a remarkably short space of time. After only a few months' training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, he traveled to Europe and around the United States before settling in Missouri. In the 1830s, Bingham was producing stylized portraits. By 1845, his style had improved dramatically. In 1856, he went to D & uuml;sseldorf, Germany as a place to study. Upon returning home, his style had changed to an adoption of a dry academic technique, which ultimately proved unsuccessful.
With paintings such as these of North American frontier life, Bingham focused on everyday scenes. In an age when the camera was not widely available, Bingham provided an interesting insight into his fellow citizens in Missouri and their way of life. "Fishing on the Mississippi" is typical of the dreamy lyricism of Bingham's mature work.
Bingham was actively involved in politics, and in 1849 was elected to the Missouri State Legislature. In "Canvassing for a Vote" the artist shows an innocent country bumpkin and a skeptical potbellied old gentleman listening to an enthusiastic politician, while a sensible dog lies dozing at their feet. The locale is Bingham's hometown of Arrow Rock, Mo.; the inn in the background still stands today.
"Fishing on the Mississippi" was commissioned by the New York art dealer Goupil to serve as the basis for a lithograph. The painting was lost until 1954 when its owner in Florida sent it to the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art for restoration. The museum's curator recognized the painting as the original model for the lithograph, and the Nelson Atkins purchased it shortly afterwards.
Artist's reception: This afternoon at the Butler in Youngstown, the museum will have an opening reception for local artist Phyllis Beard. The exhibition features a new series of work by Beard that commemorates the artist's friends, family, and scenes from her daily life. Of particular interest is the work titled "Schechina Glory," which inaugurates the artist's forthcoming series of paintings that will focus upon biblical scenes from both the Old and New Testaments.
Films: On Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., the film "Man Ray" will be shown in the Butler's Zona Auditorium. A part of the PBS American Masters Series, the film covers the life and artwork of the innovative modern artist and includes both portions of interviews and archival footage. Born in Philadelphia as Emmanuel Rudnitsky, Man Ray grew discouraged by the New York art world of the early 1900s, changed his name and moved to Paris where he was embraced by the Dadaists, and later the Surrealists.
Other films have been planned for March, including American film classics. Contact the museum at (330) 743-1711, Ext. 123 for a complete Butler film listing.
XButler hours in Youngstown are Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday noon to 4 p.m. Butler hours at the Trumbull branch are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Butler Salem hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission to all three facilities is free.