George L. Stout, conservator with Harvard’s Fogg Museum of Art in the 1920s, first articulated the three-legged stool approach to art authentication when connoisseurship alone was the standard. Questioning a connoisseur’s opinion, “was as naughty as inquiring about the digestive system of an opera singer…it wasn’t proper. And that was very good for the trade.”[1], February 2002, 1.)) But Stout and …
George Caleb Bingham and the Art Detective
George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) George Caleb Bingham lived at the edge of civilization after his family moved from Virginia to Missouri Territory in 1819. He saw the native peoples, the trappers and fur traders, and the fishermen. He saw the men who worked the steamboats, the lighters, the wood boats. He saw camp meetings, political stumping, elections, and the verdicts …