 In 1852 George Caleb Bingham painted an epic portrait of Boone escorting settlers through the Cumberland Gap.Using Biblical and classical imagery to justify and heroicize westward expansion, Bingham portrayed Rebecca Boone in the pose of a Madonna, a popular domestic ideal of the time, and she is completed in interpretive ways with a faithful hunting dog and her husband leading a noble charger.She represented all pioneer women who by the mid-nineteenth century were idealized and celebrated.