John Wilmerding, Who Helped Give American Art an Identity, Dies at 86

John Wilmerding, a towering figure in American art whose eclectic career as a scholar, museum curator and collector was instrumental in elevating the cultural significance and market value of painters such as Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins and Fitz Henry Lane, died on June 6 in Manhattan. He was 86.

His brother, James Wilmerding, said the cause of death, at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was complications of congestive heart failure.

When Mr. Wilmerding began teaching in the 1960s, American art was underappreciated, if not totally unknown. There were virtually no university survey courses in the subject, textbooks or major exhibitions.

“American art just didn’t hold the same sort of attention and respect that European art did, and certainly the art of the Renaissance or the old masters,” said Justin Wolff, chairman of the art history department at the University of Maine and a former student of Mr. Wilmerding’s. “It was behind culturally. It didn’t really have an identity.”

Mr. Wilmerding helped give it one.

He published more than 20 books, including “American Masterpieces: Singular Expressions of National Genius” (2019), a collection of his columns on art in The Wall Street Journal.