Scholarly Guidance

Existing scholarly works on Bingham have provided essential guidance and will serve as building blocks for the catalogue raisonné revision itself.

Professor of Art History E. Maurice Bloch (1925-1989) provided major scholarship.

• Bloch. The Paintings of George Caleb Bingham: A Catalogue Raisonné (1986, University of Missouri Press). This currently serves as the standard reference book and is supported by two companion volumes, also by Bloch:

  • George Caleb Bingham: The Evolution of an Artist (1967, University of California Press)

  • George Caleb Bingham: A Catalogue Raisonné (1967, University of California Press)

• Bloch. The Drawings of George Caleb Bingham (1975, University of Missouri Press)

Independent art historian Fred R. Kline led a team of scholars (during 2005-2021) in identifying newly discovered and authenticated paintings by Bingham.

Initial encouragement for an update to Bloch’s 1986 catalogue raisonné came to Kline in 2005 from the late American historian-biographer Paul Nagel (1925-2011), whose biography of Bingham was due to be published at the time:  George Caleb Bingham:  Missouri’s Famed Painter and Forgotten Politician (2005, University of Missouri Press).  Nagel invited Kline to join him on his book tour throughout Missouri and Nagel became the first member of the Advisory Board to the project.  The Advisory Board provides guidance and leadership of the project and reviews new submissions for inclusion.

Advisory Board:

Brian T. Allen. Independent Art Historian, curator and writer. Allen served for many years as a museum director and curator at the New -York Historical Society, Addison Gallery of American Art, and Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, among other positions.

Dr. William L. Coleman. Wyeth Foundation Curator and Director, Andrew & Betsy Wyeth Study Center at the Brandywine Museum of Art and the Farnsworth Art Museum. Coleman is a scholar and curator specializing in the history of American landscape art. Recent projects include Terraforming: Olana's Historic Photography Collection Unearthed and Every Leaf & Twig: Andrew Wyeth's Botanical Imagination.

Jennifer A. Greenhill. Endowed Professor of American Art, University of Arkansas School of Art, and Inaugural Director of Graduate Studies and Museum Partnerships with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Greenhill is the author of Playing It Straight: Art and Humor in the Gilded Age (2012), and a co-editor of A Companion to American Art (2015). She has published widely on 19th and 20th century American art and visual culture.

Others who have been consulted over the years include:

Fred R. Kline, Editor Emeritus (1939-2021), Independent Art Historian, Author, Artist. Kline worked as a writer on the editorial staff of National Geographic Magazine during the 1970s; served as Associate Director of University Relations, Assistant to the President, and Adjunct Professor in the English Department of Cornell University 1979-80; founded Fred R. Kline Gallery and Kline Art Research Associates in Santa Fe, 1980; as Editor-Director, founded the George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné Supplement in 2005, the catalyst for the current revised Bingham Catalogue Raisonné. He is also the author of Leonardo’s Holy Child (a “memoir of discovery” published by Pegasus Books, 2016), as well as four books of poems, a portion of which he was invited to record at the Library of Congress in 1976. His sculpture, Temple of the Hills, won a national public sculpture award from Art in America in 1994.

Dr. Paul C. Nagel (1926-2011), Bingham historian and Biographer.

William Kloss. Independent Art Historian, Smithsonian Associate; Professor of Art, The Teaching Company; Emeritus White House Preservation Committee (Art), Washington, D.C.

Dr. Elizabeth Fellows Andrus-Rivera. Noted author, lecturer, and Professor of Art History, Portland State University.

Dr. John Wilmerding. Sarofim Professor of Art, Princeton University; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Specific Goals

At the outset of the project, and based on Bloch’s research, Kline had estimated that some 50 paintings by Bingham were un-located and unidentified. Therefore, additions were believed to be probable and very likely to occur since Bingham only signed about 5% of his paintings – the majority of which are unsigned portraits but which also include important unsigned genre paintings and landscapes as well.  The progress has been based on the pursuit and practice of connoisseurship in relation to Bingham’s body of work and in judging the stylistic and documentary evidence of a suggested painting and the study of its signature comparative details.

Of primary importance to the project is the inclusion of new high-resolution photographs of each painting. These replace the older  black-and-white images in the Bloch volumes. This allows for scholars, students, and those doing historical research to examine Bingham’s paintings in great detail.

Updated research is also being added in the categories of bibliography, exhibition histories, and provenance.

The Riverbank Foundation will also direct some funds, on an as-needed basis, toward conservation of Bingham paintings and new photography.

For more specific information, please contact Rachael Blackburn Cozad at director@riverbankfoundation.org

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