Samuel Burtis Baker (September 29, 1882 - March 10, 1967),Elizabeth C. Haff, "Samuel Burtis Baker Rediscovered," ''

American Art Review ''American Art Review'' is an art magazine founded and edited by Thomas R. Kellaway who published the magazine from September 1973 until November 1978. In the summer of 1992 he revived the magazine, which is published to this day. It is published ...

'', February/March 1994, p. 110. commonly known as Burt Baker, was an American artist and teacher, best known for his

portrait painting Portrait Painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to represent a specific human subject. The term 'portrait painting' can also describe the actual painted portrait. Portraitists may create their work by commission, for public and pr ...

Early life and education

Baker was born in

South Boston, Massachusetts South Boston is a densely populated neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, located south and east of the Fort Point Channel and abutting Dorchester Bay. South Boston, colloquially known as Southie, has undergone several demographic transformati ...

,Christine Temin
“Forgotten talents of the Boston Art Club,”
''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'', August 3, 1993. to Samuel Burtis and Jennie Morgan Brine Baker. He graduated from

The English High School The English High School of Boston, Massachusetts, United States, is one of the first public high schools in America, founded in 1821. Originally called The English Classical School, it was renamed The English High School upon its first relocation ...

in Boston in 1901 as president of his class, and as winner of the Lawrence Prize for Drawing. He studied at the

Massachusetts Normal Art School Massachusetts College of Art and Design, branded as MassArt, is a public college of visual and applied art in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1873, it is one of the nation’s oldest art schools, the only publicly funded independent art school ...

in Boston from 1901 to 1906, under

Joseph DeCamp Joseph Rodefer DeCamp (November 5, 1858February 11, 1923) was an American painter and educator. Biography Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he studied with Frank Duveneck. In the second half of the 1870s he went with Duveneck and fellow students ...

and Ernest Lee Major. After graduating, he continued his studies in Mystic, Connecticut, with

Charles Harold Davis Charles Harold Davis (7 January 1856 – 5 August 1933) was an American landscape painter. Biography He was born at Amesbury, Massachusetts. A pupil of the schools of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, he was sent to Paris in 1880. Having studi ...

, and

Belmont, Massachusetts Belmont is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. It is a western suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, United States; and is part of the Greater Boston metropolitan area. At the time of the 2020 U.S. Census, the town's population stood at 27,295 ...

, with Edward H. Barnard, focusing on landscape painting.David B. Dearinger, editor,
Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design, Volume I, 1826-1925
', Hudson Hills Press: New York and Manchester, 2004, p. 24.

Career

Painting

Baker opened his own studio in Boston in 1910. His early work consisted primarily of portraits of society women, educators and musicians, including a 1910 painting of his former teacher Ernest Lee Major, which was exhibited in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, later joining the collection of the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

. Following a 1910 exhibition of 10 of his portraits at Copley Gallery in Boston, he was commissioned to do portraits for the

Harvard University Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

, the Massachusetts and New Hampshire state legislatures, and others. In 1916, he moved into

Fenway Studios The Fenway Studios are artists' studios located at 30 Ipswich Street, Boston, Massachusetts. The studios were built after a disastrous 1904 fire at Harcourt Studios in which many artists lost their homes, studios, and work. Business and civic lea ...

, where many of Boston's leading artists worked.Haff, ''American Art Review'', February/March 1994, p. 111. Best known as a portrait artist, he would expand his range around this time to include figure painting, landscape, cityscape and still life. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, he designed

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and

Liberty Loan A liberty bond (or liberty loan) was a war bond that was sold in the United States to support the Allied cause in World War I. Subscribing to the bonds became a symbol of patriotic duty in the United States and introduced the idea of financi ...

posters for the US government. After moving to

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, in 1921, Baker regularly exhibited with the Arts Club of Washington and the Society of Washington Artists. He was elected to the

Guild of Boston Artists The Guild of Boston Artists (The Guild) was founded in 1914 by a handful of Boston artists working in the academic and realist traditions. Among the founding members were Frank Weston Benson, William McGregor Paxton and Edmund C. Tarbell, who ser ...

in 1925. A ''

'' review of a 1925 solo show at the Guild of Boston Artists Gallery praised the Guild for recognizing Baker as one of the foremost painters in the US. ''Interior with Figure'' (1920) is considered to be Baker's most famous work. In it, a woman in profile holds up a small hand mirror, silhouetted against a curtained window. It won the

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...

's William A. Clark Prize in 1921, and was awarded a silver medal at the Corcoran's Biennial Exhibition of 1921. It made its New York debut in the National Academy Museum and School's winter exhibition in 1923. The Corcoran Gallery of Art purchased the painting in 1936.Haff, ''American Art Review'', February/March 1994, p. 114. Baker's portrait of opera singer

Lillian Nordica Lillian Nordica (December 12, 1857 – May 10, 1914) was an American opera singer who had a major stage career in Europe and her native country. Nordica established herself as one of the foremost dramatic sopranos of the late 19th and early 20t ...

in costume as Brunhilde from '' Ring of the Nibelung'' was his longest-running portrait work, begun in 1910 and finally completed in 1948. It was hung at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, and later donated to the

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...

.Haff, ''American Art Review'', February/March 1994, p. 157. Several of Baker's paintings were loaned to

The White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...

for display in

Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...

's private living quarters from May 1945 to October 1946.

Teaching

Baker taught drawing and design at the Rindge School in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

, from 1918 to 1921.Haff, ''American Art Review'', February/March 1994, p. 112. In 1921, he moved to Washington, D.C., to teach at the School of the

, where he taught life drawing, composition and drawing from antiquity. He was vice principal there from 1926 until he retired in 1935. From 1925 to 1936, he was also an adjunct professor at the College of Fine Arts at

George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , preside ...

, teaching drawing and painting.

Death and legacy

Baker died at his home in Washington, D.C., on March 10, 1967. He was successful during his lifetime, but had fallen into obscurity by the time of his death, in part because he was two decades younger than many of the other Boston painters with whom he was linked, and also because his representational style of painting had fallen out of fashion.Christine Temin
“Museum show or art dealer’s sale?”
''Boston Globe'', August 4, 1993. Baker had a daughter, Alden Baker, born in 1928, who went on to become an impressionist artist. In 1993, a quarter-century after his death, the

Fuller Craft Museum Fuller Craft Museum is an arts and crafts museum in the city of Brockton, Massachusetts, 25 miles south of Boston. It receives 20,000 visitors a year. It contains contemporary craft-based art of many different genres and origins. It is the only ...

in Brockton, Massachusetts, held a solo show of 30 Baker paintings, in tandem with the exhibition ''A Century of Talent: Unknown Artists of the Boston Art Club'', which also included a Baker painting.

Selected exhibitions

* Boston Art Club, Boston, MA, 1908 *

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Philadelphia, PA Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, various shows, 1908-33 * Copley Gallery, Boston, MA, 1910 *

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

Chicago, IL (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

, various shows, 1911–29 * Panama–Pacific International Exposition,

San Francisco, CA San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, 1915 * Doll and Richards Gallery, Boston, MA, 1915-16 *

, various shows, 1918-39Royal Cortissoz
“The Corcoran Gallery’s Eighth Exhibition,”
'' New-York Tribune'', December 18, 1921. *

Art Association of Newport Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of what ...

Newport, RI Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, and northeast of New York ...

, 1920 * City Art Museum,

St. Louis, MO St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which ...

, 1920 * Detroit Institute of Arts,

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, 1920 *

, various shows, 1922, 1925, 1927, 1948, 1959 * National Academy Museum and School,

New York, NY New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, 1923 * Carnegie Institute,

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, 1923 * International Exhibition of Contemporary Art,

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, 1924 * Charcoal Club at the Peabody Institute,

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, 1924 * Sesquicentennial International Exposition, Philadelphia, PA, 1926 * Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO, 1930 *

Library, Washington, D.C., 1951 *

Brockton, MA Brockton is a city in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States; the population is 105,643 as of the 2020 United States Census. Along with Plymouth, it is one of the two county seats of Plymouth County. It is the sixth-largest city in Massa ...

, 1993

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Baker, Samuel Burtis 1882 births 1967 deaths 20th-century American painters American male painters American portrait painters American Impressionist painters Painters from Boston Painters from Washington, D.C. Massachusetts College of Art and Design alumni English High School of Boston alumni 20th-century American male artists