George Caleb Bingham, who earned the sobriquet of "the Missouri artist," evolved from a locally known portrait painter to an artist of national renown. His letters illuminate the complex personality of a man actively involved in the political, social, and cultural life of nineteenth-century America -- an eyewitness to westward expansion, a firsthand observer of river and rail commerce, and a participant in the Civil War. [...] In a fascinating introduction, Joan Stack summarizes Bingham's artistic career. She focuses on the artist's efforts to market himself as a "western" painter and finds that much of his national reputation in the nineteenth century derived from the genre and political paintings of the 1840s and 1850s, particularly those from which prints were made and widely distributed. Readers interested in nineteenth-century Missouri will find these letters from the pen of an artist who maintained a keen connection to the political affairs of his time truly engaging.