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Abstract
George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879), a nineteenth-century painter, most well-known for his genre pictures, also painted landscapes. This study will demonstrate the importance of understanding one landscape in particular, View of Pikes Peak. Bingham, recognized as a painter of figural types, specifically western types, extended the same categorized method to his landscapes, producing types of landscapes rather than particular locations. Accordingly, the landscapes in Binghams genre scenes are nonspecific, avoiding any signs of a particular place. Pikes Peak offers a departure from this trend. The circumstances surrounding the creation of this painting, in conjunction with Binghams awareness of topography, make for a provoking moment worthy of investigation. Binghams journey to Colorado to improve his health, his political belief in the unification of the country through commerce, and his perception of the West as Americas great frontier all contribute to his artistic choices in producing a uniquely identifiable landscape.