Between 1847 and 1855 George Caleb Bingham completed a half dozen or so canvases that are among the most unusual and interesting documents in the history of American painting. They are well known to students, critics, and art historians but they are only occasionally reproduced in books that celebrate the “finest” American paintings. Others of Bingham’s works are duly included in such selective compilations, for at his best he was a highly competent artist.

The fact remains, however, that his most creditable pictures have attracted attention as much, if not more, for their subject matter than for the creative talents that gave them a special quality. And so it is with this group, known as his “election series. He once wrote a friend that his purpose in painting it was to record “our social and political characteristics as daily and annually exhibited,” and this is precisely what he accomplished.

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