COLLECTIONS-PROVENANCE (based on research provided in E. Maurice Bloch, The Paintings of George Caleb Bingham: A Catalogue Raisonne, University of Missouri Press,1986 )
Probably Goupil & Co., New York, 1852
Note: The uncommon 1851-53 Goupil & Co. stencil on “Horse Thief”, the period in which Goupil was Bingham’s dealer and when he was frequently in New York, states the dealer’s early New York address and offers a small window of time during which they commissioned paintings and prints of “Western character” from the artist. Two of those commissioned paintings and the related prints are known from 1851-52. Importantly, Goupil also commissioned a print to be made of “The Emigration of Daniel Boone”, recently rejected by the American Art Union, marking the end of an association that brought the artist essential sales and widespread renown. Bingham then began to rework “Daniel Boone” and create new paintings with a renewed fervor. In New York during 1852, and recently finished with “Daniel Boone”, Bingham doubtless encountered Asher Durand's “God's Judgment Upon Gog”, a grandiose fire-and-brimstone Biblical allegory, in the manner of Thomas Cole and John Martin, altogether shocking to see amongst Durand’s usually tranquil body of work. “God’s Judgment” was on exhibit at the National Academy of Design, of which Durand was President. Bingham's quite evident competitive response to “God's Judgment” was to paint “Horse Thief”, a more symbolic and restrained Biblical allegory, more stylistically similar to Cole but in clear counterpoint to Durand’s narrative of a vengeful God. “Horse Thief”, in turn, can be clearly linked back as a pendant to “Daniel Boone”, in many ways a Biblical allegory itself. As a contrasting link to “Daniel Boone”, “Horse Thief” suggests, with symbolic allusions to the teachings of Moses and Jesus, the rule of Constitutional law as opposed to vigilante law, pointing out that Boone’s new frontier and the growing Nation would need a foundation of law and order. Like Durand’s “God’s Judgment”, Bingham’s “Horse Thief” was a startling variation from his standard works and would remain unique in his body of work; arguably it was his most personal painting, touching his deepest moral convictions. From an early age Bingham had studied the Bible and the law, had considered being a preacher and a lawyer, and for most of his life, as a Whig politician, fought for the primacy of Constitutional law. Goupil’s encouragement to revise “Daniel Boone”, and their commissioning more paintings, undoubtedly gave Bingham renewed confidence after the Art Union’s rejection and thus added a vital element in assisting the creation of “Horse Thief”. The company’s stencil identification attached to “Horse Thief” strongly suggests its importance in the painting’s provenance and a commission from Goupil cannot be ruled out.
Collection of the Artist
Probably Nathaniel Phillips, Piano forte merchant, St. Louis & Boston, 1852-?
Note: The best documentary evidence known for “Horse Thief” being owned and exhibited by Bingham, and its further consignment to Nathaniel Phillips piano store in Boston, where it was no doubt exhibited with its pendant “Daniel Boone”, finds support in the earliest published article considering Bingham’s work. In that article, according to an old friend of Bingham—Matthew Hastings, 1834-1919, twenty years younger than Bingham who became a noted and highly respected artist from St. Louis—Bingham is quoted as saying to Hastings (in an undated conversation) “The ‘Horse Thief’ excited much attention in Boston” ( May Simonds, “A Pioneer Painter”, American Methodist Magazine, October 1902, p.76). Nathaniel Phillips owned “Daniel Boone” from the time he was a merchant in St. Louis, before moving to Boston. “Daniel Boone” was originally consigned to him by Bingham in 1852 to be raffled off but the raffle did not transpire and it was instead purchased by Phillips who, at the end of his life, donated “Daniel Boone” in 1890 to Washington University, St. Louis. “Horse Thief” in all likelihood was also consigned to Phillips around the same time as “Daniel Boone” and became attached to “Daniel Boone” and Boston in Simond’s published account of Bingham’s comment. This reliable evidence informed E. Maurice Bloch’s research and supported the continued attribution of “Horse Thief” in his Bingham Catalogue Raisonne, although he had only a title and a one reliable witness. At some point, it appears that Phillips returned “Horse Thief” to Bingham.
Collection of the Artist
Possibly Matthias A. Bingham (d.1861 Houston, Texas; the artist’s brother)
Note: Matthias Amend Bingham went to Texas in 1835 and fought as an officer with Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto; he became Quartermaster General of the Texas Republic, stayed in close touch with his Missouri family, and later died in Houston, Texas in 1861, leaving no recorded family. Bingham went to Houston in 1861 to settle his brother’s estate, and again in 1873 to Houston, and to Austin and Stephenville, Texas (where his married daughter Clara Bingham King lived), and to Stephenville again in 1878. “Horse Thief” would have been an appropriate gift to Bingham’s brother who lived in the lawless Texas frontier where horse-thievery was very common and it may well have been in his estate.
Probably Clara Bingham King (Mrs. Thomas Benton King, d.1901 Stephenville, Texas) the artist's daughter
Note: Bingham visited his daughter Clara in Stephenville in 1873 and 1878 (a year before his death) and probably gave “Horse Thief” to her during his 1873 or 1878 trips to Texas. Of George Caleb Bingham’s six children, his daughter Clara was the only one known that had descendants; she was survived by eight children, several of whom lived well into the 20th century. Of Bingham’s eight brothers and sisters, it is likely that some followed their oldest brother Matthias to Texas and became associated with Clara and her family.
Probably Bingham Family Collection, Texas: by descent in the family from ca. 1901-1997 (not ascribed to Bingham)
Note: At some early point, “Horse Thief”, unsigned and not inscribed (normal for a Bingham painting), and with no attached notes, descended in the family without being ascribed to Bingham. Stephenville, Texas, Clara Bingham King’s home for almost fifty years, is 150 miles from Dallas-Forth Worth where a number of Bingham descendents came to live, as well as in other Texas cities, during the 20th-21st centuries. Only two Bingham relations in Dallas were interviewed in the 1940s and 1960s by Bloch, both of whom noted some Bingham paintings in their possession. Other distant Bingham relations in Texas, beyond the 1960s, were not contacted or noted by Bloch.
(See "Texas Provenance", click on Research below)
Nick Brock Antiques, Dallas, Texas (not ascribed to Bingham)
Kline Art Research Associates, Santa Fe: 1999-2000 (here established as Bingham, Horse Thief)
Note: Purchased for a Private Collection by Fred R. Kline, Director-Editor of the George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonne Supplement of Paintings. Kline, along with the Bingham Advisory Board, authenticated “Horse Thief” as an original painting by George Caleb Bingham. It appears as #1 in the GCBCRS along with twelve other newly catalogued Bingham paintings.
Private Collection, South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, 1999-present
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