Barry Bauman, Restoration Artist and Detective, Dies at 73

For three decades, a portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln hung in the governor’s mansion in Springfield, Ill. Mrs. Lincoln was said to have commissioned Francis Bicknell Carpenter, a celebrated painter who lived in the White House for six months in 1864, to paint it as a gift for her husband, President Abraham Lincoln.

After Lincoln’s assassination, the story went, the distraught and impoverished first lady asked Mr. Carpenter to dispose of the work.

Decades later, a portrait with this history-rich back story was sold to Lincoln descendants. They took it for a cleaning in 2011 to Barry Bauman, an independent conservator who had trained at the Art Institute of Chicago.

As he removed decades of dirt and grime, Mr. Bauman discovered that the painting was a fake.

Peeling back the layers, he found the portrait of an anonymous woman whose image had been heavily retouched to make her look like Mrs. Lincoln. Mr. Carpenter was not involved in any way; his forged signature had been painted atop the original varnish, signaling that it was applied later. Also added was a brooch containing an image of Lincoln based on a photograph that his widow loathed — and would probably not have worn for her own portrait.

Working with the curator of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Mr. Bauman determined that the whole story of the painting’s provenance had been concocted to wheedle money out of Lincoln’s family.

The discovery of the fraud made national headlines, and the painting — which had appeared on the cover of an edition of Carl Sandburg’s “Mary Lincoln: Wife and Widow” (1932) — lost its value, estimated at the time at $300,000.

Mr. Bauman, who made his mark across the rarefied field of art restoration in numerous ways, died on Feb. 5 at his home in Riverside, Ill. He was 73. His wife, Mary Bauman, said the cause was heart failure.

As a conservator, Mr. Bauman was part detective, exposing hidden layers, uncovering fakes and finding lost signatures. Mostly, he brought faded canvases back to their former glory, as was the case with “Apollo and Venus,” an oil painting by the 16th-century Dutch master Otto van Veen that had been found in an old storeroom.

“The conservation of paintings can sometimes be a subject of drama,” Mr. Bauman told the newspaper Inside Iowa State in 2015. (He had restored numerous paintings for the university.) “And each artwork in need of restoration carries within it, like a Chinese box, layer upon layer of meaning, sometimes obscured, puzzling or distorted.”

Having established himself as a conservator, Mr. Bauman made an unusual career move in his mid-50s — he decided to donate his restoration services to nonprofit organizations that couldn’t afford to take proper care of their treasures. Over roughly 15 years, he provided an estimated $6 million worth of work to more than 300 museums, organizations and historic homes.

“Sometimes you hear people say, ‘I love my work so much, I’d do it for free,’” he told Inside Iowa State. “That’s the way it’s always been for me. I’ve always just loved what I do.”

He was working pro bono when he uncovered the Lincoln fraud. The painting remains in the collection of the Lincoln library and museum. Christian McWhirter, the Lincoln historian there, said in an interview that when the painting is displayed, it is accompanied by an explanation of the fraud.

“I like displaying it,” he said, “because it’s a historical artifact with a great story.”

Barry Robert Bauman was born on April 9, 1948, in Syracuse, N.Y., to Dr. Stewart and Edina Bauman His father was chief of obstetrics at a Syracuse hospital; his mother was a homemaker.

Mr. Bauman became interested in art by accident. He played basketball while at Beloit College in Wisconsin and had to find classes that didn’t interfere with practice. Art history fit the bill. To Mr. Bauman’s surprise, the teacher was so good, he fell in love with the subject — so much so that he wanted to major in it. But Beloit didn’t offer such a major. He majored instead in geography, in which he learned about the temperate climate in New Zealand. As someone raised in the Snow Belt, he often dreamed of warmer weather and put visiting New Zealand on his far-off bucket list.

After graduating in 1969, Mr. Bauman received his master’s in art history in 1971 from the University of Chicago, where he specialized in Dutch Baroque painting.

He then inquired at the Art Institute of Chicago if he could do an internship in conservation work. Alfred Jakstas, the renowned chief conservator there, said he could, but only if he promised to stay for 10 years, ensuring that the Art Institute would benefit from its investment in his training. Mr. Bauman, who had to take additional college chemistry courses to qualify, ended up staying for 11 years and became an associate conservator.

Like many in his profession, he also worked privately for clients on the side. One was the artist Mary Bourke, who brought him two of her paintings that had been damaged. They were married in 1984.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Ian and Jeff, and two sisters, Nechie King and Sharon Corton.

Once Mr. Bauman began earning more from his private work than from his work at the Art Institute, he decided to start his own company, one that would serve smaller private organizations that didn’t have the budget for top conservatory facilities.

With the backing of Marshall Field V, the scion of the prominent Chicago retailing family, he founded the Chicago Conservation Center in 1983. It took on projects like restoring 172 flood-damaged paintings for the Chicago History Museum and the $2 million preservation of hundreds of murals from the Works Progress Administration for the Chicago school system. Now called simply the Conservation Center, the company bills itself as the largest private art conservation laboratory in the country.

Mr. Bauman sold the business in 2003 and the next year started another, Barry Bauman Conservation, to restore items pro bono for small nonprofit institutions. He managed the outfit by charging the institutions the cost of materials, which was negligible, and the cost of transporting the items, while he donated his labor. He restored more than 1,500 paintings.

After back surgery made restoration work more difficult, he focused on giving lectures and helping museums apply for grants.

All the while, Mr. Bauman continued to nurse that college dream of one day visiting New Zealand. Finally, in 1996, he and his wife went. While there, he sprang on her the news that he wanted to buy property that very day. He tried, but that deal fell through. He returned shortly thereafter and bought a 26-acre oceanfront property on the Coromandel Peninsula on the North Island. In 2009, he and his wife had a log home built there, and it became his family’s retreat from Chicago’s winters.

“He made this dream come true that he had as a 20-year-old,” his son Ian said. “There was nothing left on his list that he didn’t do. He got it all in.”