We on the Courtauld Institute are deeply saddened by the demise of Professor David Bindman (1940-2025). Professor Bindman was Durning-Lawrence Emeritus Professor within the Historical past of Artwork at UCL. From 1983-1987 and 1992-1998, he served as a member of the Courtauld’s Administration Committee. He obtained his PhD on the Courtauld in 1972 beneath the supervision of Anthony Blunt.
David’s contribution to the sphere of artwork historical past is immense. His first guide, Blake as an Artist (1977), based mostly on his Courtauld dissertation, stays a milestone in research of the artist, putting Blake’s visible work on the identical footing as that of his poetry. A lifetime’s dedication to the examine of Blake resulted in lots of books and exhibitions, the final of which, William Blake’s Universe, was co-curated on the Fitzwilliam Museum and Hamburger Kunsthalle with the Courtauld’s Dr Esther Chadwick in 2024.
His extremely unique, deeply researched writings on John Flaxman, William Hogarth, Louis-François Roubilliac and a number of eighteenth-century British and European artists joined these on Blake. David’s work on race and aesthetics was equally ground-breaking. With Henry Louis Gates Jr., David was collection editor for The Picture of the Black in Western Artwork, a monumental enterprise that has underpinned new approaches to the historical past of Black portraiture and illustration lately. His guide Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Thought of Race within the Eighteenth Century (2002) was adopted in 2023 by ‘Race is Every thing’: Artwork and Human Distinction, which examined the intersections of artwork and racial science within the nineteenth century.
In the whole lot he did, David mixed a way of heat, kindness and wit. His work was rooted in an abiding ardour for objects and artworks themselves. To youthful students he was tremendously beneficiant and supportive, and his mental curiosity and liveliness remained undimmed. We rejoice his magnificent profession and mourn an excellent loss to the artwork historic group.
