Estill Curtis Pennington Jr., the art historian who more than anyone else insisted that Kentucky’s visual culture be taken seriously — on its own terms and in its own voice — died in Paris on Dec. 16. He was 75 and spent his final months at Bourbon Heights Nursing Home.
For decades, Pennington, widely known as “Buck,” stood against a stubborn assumption in American art history: that important work originates only in New York, Boston or Paris (France). With patience, rigor and an unmistakable Central Kentucky accent, he demonstrated otherwise. His life’s work mapped a tradition of artists rooted in the Ohio River Valley and the broader South whose achievement, he argued persuasively, belonged at the center of the national story, not at its edges.
“Kentucky has lost its premier interpreter of Kentucky art history,” said Richard H.C. Clay, trustee emeritus of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville. “His expertise on Matthew Harris Jouett, Oliver Frazer, Joseph Henry Bush, and Aaron Corrine — along with our Commonwealth’s later portraitists — was unparalleled. I, like so many, have lost a treasured friend.”
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Pennington’s most widely cited book, ”Lessons in Likeness: Portrait Painters in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley, 1802–1920” (University Press of Kentucky, 2010), remains the indispensable work on early regional portraiture. Drawing on decades of archival research, he traced painters from frontier itinerants to academically trained professionals, revealing how portraiture chronicled ambition, authority and cultural change in a young and evolving society. It is a book that quietly reshaped how scholars understand American portraiture beyond the eastern seaboard.
Earlier, he had published ”Kentucky: The Master Painters from the Frontier Era to the Great Depression” (2008), a sweeping survey that placed the commonwealth’s artists within national artistic movements while never losing sight of local circumstance or individual temperament. Louisville writer Warren Payne edited the volume; his wife, Julie, provided the photography. “For his books, Estill knew exactly what he wanted — from layout to illustration to even the paper used,” Payne recalled. “‘Kentucky: The Master Painters’ is the art history of Kentucky. We were glad we could help bring it to fruition.”
Pennington’s reputation extended well beyond Kentucky. His ”Look Away: Reality and Sentiment in Southern Art” (1989) helped establish Southern art history as a scholarly field, while ”Downriver: Currents of Style in Louisiana Painting, 1800–1950” (1991) offered a richly layered account of artistic exchange along the Mississippi River. These works made clear that Southern artists were not merely provincial imitators but engaged participants in modern cultural currents. The results of his intellectual reframing work can be seen in museums every day, including the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.
Even as his health declined, Pennington remained intellectually engaged, giving public lectures on art history, advising art collectors and putting the finishing touches on Volume Two of “The Annals of Bourbon County.” He was recently interviewed for the forthcoming documentary, ”2 Gents,” produced by Louisville filmmaker Eleanor Bingham Miller, which explores the collaboration between her father, publisher Barry Bingham Sr., and artist Henry Varnum Poor on the frescoes in the lobby of the Courier-Journal building at Sixth and Broadway, painted during the building’s construction in the late 1940s.
“As a preeminent scholar of American and Kentucky art, and as a dear friend of Barry Bingham Sr. and his family, Buck will be an outstanding spokesman,” Miller said. Directed by Bruce Skinner, the film examines a rare moment when journalism, patronage and art converged to produce a lasting work of public culture.
The future of those frescoes remains uncertain following the newspaper’s departure from the building in September.
In addition to his books, Pennington wrote extensively for exhibition catalogues and monographs, including studies of Will Henry Stevens and a co-authored volume on Douglas Bourgeois. He served as editor of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 21: Art and Architecture (2013), a role that reflected both his authority and his sense of stewardship.
Pennington held academic and curatorial positions associated with multiple art institutions and universities, including Transylvania University and the University of Kentucky Art Museum, but he wrote in a style free of jargon, trusting the work — and the reader. Time and again, he restored overlooked artists to visibility and provided frameworks that others could build upon.
“Although he served as an archivist, museum director, and curator,” said Peter M. Morrin, retired director of the Speed Art Museum, “Buck is best remembered for his devotion to the history of art in the South. He was fiercely loyal to his Bluegrass roots and will be remembered especially for his work on 19th century Kentucky artists.”
Equally important was his role as mentor and connector. He urged younger scholars to look closely at their own communities and advised collectors and institutions on preservation. In Paris, the Kentucky town where he lived, he embodied his conviction that intellectual life and local commitment are not competing virtues.
Penningtons’s combination of playful humor and deep faith in humanity made him an especially memorable teacher, friend and colleague.
“He loved Bourbon County,” Clay said, “which he always referred to as Heaven.”
Paris was where he was born on Oct. 3, 1950, and in a 2022 oral history with Allison Cox, he fondly recalled his youth there. His colorful memories included all the stores downtown during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the Paris-Bourbon County Library, where he spent many hours as a youth devouring books under the guidance of the chief librarian.
“Buck Pennington was first, foremost, and always a quintessential Kentuckian,” Clay added. “He knew and upheld our Commonwealth’s history and artistic heritage. Over many years, he offered wise counsel — always accompanied by joy and raucous laughter.”
Warren Payne remembered him as “larger than life — mercurial, cutting at times, but also kind, generous, and deeply amusing. His death is a great loss to the Commonwealth. Who will now tell us what is a Jouett — and what isn’t?”
However, Pennington summed up his philosophy of life best of all: “History is not our friend but our partner.”
Survivors include his stepfather, Glen Phillips Wagner; his brother, Richard Lee Wagner (Cheryl Bussell); his stepbrother, Robin Stivers (Debbie) of Mississippi; and four nieces and nephews. He was also a proud great-uncle to nine great-nieces and great-nephews.
Funeral services [were] held at 2:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 19, at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, 311 High Street, Paris. The body was cremated. Hinton-Turner Funeral Home has been entrusted with the arrangements.
Expressions of sympathy may take the form of contributions to St. Peter’s Church or to Bluegrass Care Navigators (Hospice).
