Professor David Bindman (1940-2025)

Professor David Bindman, one of the most respected and renowned historians of 18th and 19th c British and European art and of race and visual representation, has died, a few months before his 85th birthday following a short illness. For over 50 years he was a member of the Walpole Society, serving on Council between 1982 and 1990 and joined the Consultative Committee when it was formed in 1999, remaining on the committee until his death.

After a few years' freelance teaching the History of Art at various art schools such as Central, at Ealing (where Pete Townsend later of The Who was a student) and at Corsham (where he met the artist Tom Phillips who would become a life-long friend), he was appointed lecturer in the History of Art at Westfield College in 1967, the year the College became co-ed, and was later awarded a personal Chair in 1986. In 1990 he was appointed the Durning-Lawrence Professor of the History of Art at UCL and was Head of Department for nine years. He retired in 2005 and was

made Emeritus Professor. From his retirement until his death he was Fellow of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. David’s many scholarly publications include seminal writings on William Blake (the subject of his Courtauld Institute PhD), William Hogarth, James Gillray and graphic satire, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, John Flaxman,

Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen and, with Malcom Baker, on Roubilliac and the 18th-century monument. At the Hutchins Center he was co-editor with Henry Louis Gates Jr of 13 volumes of the Image of the Black in Western Art. Two further volumes are currently awaiting publication. The Image of the European in African Art will appear shortly and a further volume, The Image of Nubia, is currently at the design and editing stage.

He also curated a number of important exhibitions including, most recently, William Blake's Universe (Fitzwilliam Museum and Hamburg Kunsthalle, 2024) co-curated with Esther Chadwick; Hogarth and His Times: Serious Comedy (The British Museum, 1997); Hogarth: Place and Progress (Soane Museum, 2019); as well as earlier exhibitions such as John Flaxman (Royal Academy and Hamburg, 1979) and a bi-centennial exhibition to mark the French Revolution, The Shadow of the Guillotine (British Museum and Vizille, 1989-90), accompanied by a celebration chez Bindmans on 14 July 1989 with fireworks, bourbon biscuits, frog confectionary and an enormous cake of the Bastille. A later and different collaboration with the British Museum was the MA in the History of the Print, which David proposed to the then Keeper of Prints & Drawings, Antony Griffiths. It ran very successfully for about a decade, until David’s​ retirement from UCL, with a number of its students going on to become distinguished print specialists and curators.

David’s legacy is immeasurable. In addition to his many scholarly achievements, he contributed to and served on a number of advisory boards and Councils. As well as his association with the Walpole Society, David was a Trustee of the Blake Trust and the Print Quarterly Trust; a member of The Burlington Magazine Editorial Committee; a member of the Council and Publications Committee of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; and of the Management Board of the Courtauld Institute.

David will be remembered as an inspiring teacher, supervisor and mentor who offered encouragement, constructive feedback and wise counsel. He will also be remembered for his real gift for friendship, for his kindness and generosity and, not least, for his infectious and irrepressible sense of humour. Everyone who knew David will be deeply saddened by his death; we will all miss him very much.

Diana Dethloff, FSA

(Hon. Editor, the Walpole Society, 1985-93)