Separated at birth

Fresca at Noodletoon wrote a bit about George Caleb Bingham’s painting The Jolly Flatboat Men. And I thought I’d seen it, but no, it’s in the National Gallery, and the painting I know is in the St. Louis Art Museum, with a different fiddler. The painting in St. Louis is Bingham’s Jolly Flatboatmen in Port, and I’ve had it in mind for years as a good item for a post, because the fiddler, to my eye, is John Hartford.

[Click either image for a larger view.]

I looked up John Hartford in the same old place and was both surprised and not surprised to find this detail:

He spent his childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was exposed to the influence that shaped much of his career and music: the Mississippi River. From the time he got his first job on the river, at age 16, Hartford was on, around, or singing about the river.

I think it’s unlikely that John Hartford did not know and love this painting.

Related reading
All OCA “separated at birth” posts (Pinboard)

[I found and cropped a photograph of John Hartford from his official Facebook page — no photographer credited. The Pinboard link does a search — no account needed.]