James S. Rollins and George Caleb Bingham: A Mizzou Friendship
The Unions have just hung a new exhibition on a wall adjacent to the US Bank on the lower level of the Missouri Student Center. The exhibition highlights the friendship between Major James S. Rollins and the artist George Caleb Bingham, both of whom played major roles in shaping the University of Missouri during its formative years. The exhibition will be up for several months, ending date to be announced. “What a significant thing their friendship was—one the father of learning in this state the other pre-eminently the greatest of Missouri artists—the very father of art in Missouri.” – Missouri Alumnus , September 1933 Upon the commission of a portrait in the spring of 1834, James Sidney Rollins (then an aspiring lawyer) met and befriended George Caleb Bingham (a young Missouri painter), and thereafter the lives of these influential Missourians were deeply interwoven until the artist’s death in 1879. The Savitar of 1914 praises James S. Rollins: “Lawyer, legis