ABSTRACT
George Caleb Bingham’s Election Series occupies a unique place in the history of American art due to its thematic focus on practical politics in a representative democracy. The artist’s own passionate involvement with the frontier electoral process, including his personal experience as a candidate for office, has created an aura of authenticity around these paintings and invited speculation that Bingham’s view of backwoods politics was based on a strong partisan bias. Consistent with recent scholarship on Bingham, Gail Husch emphasizes his Whig Party affiliation in her consideration of the Election Series; but she also challenges the consensus view that these works constitute a cynical critique of populist democracy by an orthodox Whig with elitist contempt for the common man.
Husch believes that the Election Series has been misread as an indictment of the American electorate by oversimplifying Whig ideology and misrepresenting the core of Bingham’s own political convictions. She argues instead for an understanding of the series as an idealistic vision of national unity achievable through political compromise. Although she admits to Bingham’s growing disillusionment with the electoral process and its capacity to resolve the problems created by westward expansion, Husch attributes Bingham’s loss of faith in representative government to the growing corruption of self-serving politicians and their insistence on blind loyalty to partisan interests.
