L1701

Fur Traders

Fur Traders Desending the Missouri by George Bingham

Collins Cover Announcement 

GEORGE CALEB BINGHAM

This COLLINS First Day Cover is on a postcard that I wanted to do for a reason of personal significance. My wife's grandmother had hanging in her living room several oil paintings that I always admired. A pastoral setting with river and birches. Windmills in the low country. A cottage blanketed by snow under a pink dawn. I loved them all but my favorite was (and is) a solitary traveler who has made his camp by the side of a moon-lit river. He sits in his lean-to shelter gazing upon his campfire. The flames reflect on the river, and, with the moonlight, illuminate the scene.

The hand-painted cachet for this cover was inspired by my love for that painting. By design, it is simple. It is noninvolved. Not complex. A lone traveler sits in his lean-to and draws on his pipe. I've invited a dog into my cachet which sits by his master's side. The evening campfire casts its warm glow on man and beast. On the small clearing amid tangled wooded growth. On the quiet river and the sturdy canoe. In a miniature way, it captures the feeling I get from the painting so long admired on Jessie's wall.

George Caleb Bingham was a painter of Americana and this stamp is of a fur trapper -- also a river traveler. It triggered in me the desire to do a simple COLLINS First Day Cover to honor the forgotten wanderers. The loners in the wilderness. The free spirits. The pathfinders. Definitely a non-typical COLLINS but something I wanted to do. Dedicated to Grandmother Wilkens with thanks that she shared the inspirational paintings that continue to make me feel good. Item L1701. $7.75.