Projects | George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné

The leading project of the Riverbank Foundation centers around one of America’s most important 19th Century artists, George Caleb Bingham (aka The Missouri Artist), in order to insure and further develop his important legacy in the place of American art history.

(For more information about George Caleb Bingham, read his bio here.)

The George Caleb Bingham catalogue raisonné is an online public-access catalogue of Bingham’s paintings and is intended to be the definitive reference for scholars and the public seeking information for research and general information purposes.  (Note that this is currently a work-in-progress.)

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)

Since 2005, independent art historian Fred R. Kline has led a team of scholars in identifying newly discovered and authenticated paintings by Bingham. Kline created the first public-access online catalogue raisonné supplement for a major American artist,
which served as the basis for the current catalogue raisonné.

Initial encouragement for the project 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. 

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 color photographs of each painting. These replace the older black-and-white images in the Bloch volumes and 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