Below you'll find a list of all posts from 2019
On this day in 1873, George Caleb Bingham in Kansas City, Missouri, wrote to James S. Rollins in Columbia, Missouri, “I will call by as I go east, and assist in the proper framing of your portrait. It will be well to put on a new strong stretching frame, with another good thick canvas behind it to give that on which the …
Recto and Verso The stories behind 19th century American portraits on this blog have so far spoken to the lives of people on the front of the canvas. The front of an artwork is referred to formally as “recto.” Verso” is the term for the back. The back of a painting is literally a support system. Beginning with this blog, …
“There are two ways for a painting to perish, the one is for it to be restored, the other is for it not to be restored.”—Étienne Gilson“Restoration is a necessary evil.”—Max Friedländer Restoration vs. Conservation is a frequent topic in conversations with clients about their heirloom portraits. This article by George Bisacca,Conservator Emeritus at The Metropolitan Museum of Art brilliantly explains the …
Discovering History through Art Historians usually add a painting as an illustration. Fine Art Investigations uses portraits as an entry point to history. An example is the stories behind the recently re-discovered portraits of the Dunnicas. The first part of their biography briefly described American expansion in the west after the War of 1812. Back when the Western frontier was central Missouri and …
Recto – George Caleb Bingham Mary Elizabeth Hickman was born in Franklin, Missouri, on October 10, 1820, the middle child of the three children of James E. Hickman and Sophia Woodson Hickman. The Bingham family arrived in Franklin from Virginia shortly before her birth. James Hickman and George Caleb Bingham’s father, Henry Vest Bingham, invested in some of the same …
The Correction Introduction This is the third of four blogs about the re-discovered George Caleb Bingham portraits of William Franklin Dunnica and Martha Jane Shackelford Dunnica. The work of E. Maurice Bloch (1925-1989), the world’s acknowledged expert on artist George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879), is awe-inspiring. At the University of California Los Angeles, where he was a professor of art history, he …
