George Caleb Bingham was born on March 20, 1811, in Augusta County, Virginia. He was the second of seven children born to Henry Vest and Mary Amend Bingham. Living on a large farm, George showed a strong interest in drawing at an early age. He supposedly drew on the sides of barns, fence posts, and the walls of the family mill. When George was seven, his father lost most of the family’s property to cover a friend’s debts. Homeless, George left Virginia with his parents, five siblings, his grandfather Matthias Amend, and their slaves. They headed to Missouri to build a new life.

George Bingham’s family settled in Franklin, a village on the banks of the Missouri River. It was the summer of 1819 and his parents were quick to contribute to their new community. His father opened an inn called the Square and Compass. He also started a tobacco factory, bought farmland, and became a civic leader. Bingham’s mother was an educated woman and soon started a school for girls, one of the first west of the Mississippi River.

When George was nine, a painter named Chester Harding came to Franklin and stayed at their inn. Harding was finishing a portrait of Daniel Boone. George became Harding’s helper. He stood at Harding’s side and watched him paint the famous pioneer’s portrait. By observing closely, George learned the basics of portrait painting.

In late 1823, life changed once again for George. His father died of malaria, and his mother was left with many unpaid bills. She had to give up their Franklin home and properties and move her family across the river to the Bingham farm in Saline County. Here, near the village of Arrow Rock, she raised her artistic son and his siblings. She continued to run her school and employed an art teacher, Mattie Wood, who also gave George art lessons. When George was not studying, he helped his mother on their farm and at the school.

In 1827 sixteen-year-old George Caleb Bingham left Arrow Rock to learn a trade in Boonville, Missouri. He worked for a cabinetmaker who was also a preacher. Bingham liked talking about religious and political issues and soon gained experience as both a preacher and a lawyer. He also started painting portraits. In the days before photography, many people were eager to have likenesses of loved ones. Bingham began painting his friends’ faces. They admired his work, and soon Bingham felt confident enough to travel to other towns in Missouri and paint portraits of citizens who could afford to pay him. By 1833 Bingham was earning his living as a portrait painter.

In 1834, while painting in Columbia, Bingham met James S. Rollins, an attorney and politician. The two formed a close and long-lasting friendship. Rollins often gave Bingham advice and financial support. Bingham’s letters to Rollins reveal much about their relationship as well as Bingham’s life as a painter and politician.

Before long, Bingham craved more instruction in art. In 1838 he traveled east to study the canvases of other artists. Bingham was impressed especially by the genre paintings he saw. These paintings showed scenes from everyday life. After studying in Philadelphia and making art contacts in New York City, Bingham returned to Missouri with more artistic skill and some new ideas about what he could paint.

Growing up along the Missouri River, Bingham had vivid mental pictures of life on the river. He knew the people and their occupations firsthand. In 1845 Bingham turned to this subject matter and began an important and productive period of his artistic career. While he still traveled extensively, painting portraits to support his family, Bingham started painting genre scenes that showed life on the frontier. When he shipped four of these paintings to the American Art-Union in New York, he began a profitable seven-year association with them. During this period, Bingham produced works that made him one of America's greatest genre painters.

Throughout his life, Bingham held strong beliefs about democracy and politics in America. He often used his artistic skills to portray his political views. As early as 1840, Bingham sketched and painted artful political banners for his political party, the Whigs. During his career, he also painted notable political figures such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and Senator Thomas Hart Benton. Bingham’s paintings that focus on political campaigning and elections are some of his most important compositions. They show democracy at work, with all its strengths, weaknesses, and complexities.

Bingham did not just paint his political views. He also ran for office and served in both elected and appointed positions during his lifetime. In 1846 Bingham was elected by a narrow margin to the Missouri legislature, but his opponent successfully contested the outcome and took the office. Bingham was eventually elected to represent Saline County in 1848 and represented Missouri's eighth district at the Whig National Convention in June 1852.

During the Civil War, Bingham sided with the Union. First he served as a captain in the U.S. Volunteer Reserve Corps. Then he worked as state treasurer in the provisional government in Jefferson City from 1862 to 1865. One of his most important political paintings, however, came out of his personal outrage over the actions of a Union general. Martial Law or Order No. 11 is a politically charged canvas that Bingham spent years promoting after he completed it in 1868. In 1875 he served in his last political post as Missouri’s adjutant general. At the end of his life, Bingham became the first professor of art at the University of Missouri.