Thomas Baker (artist) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Thomas Baker was a Midlands

English Midlands

The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...

landscape painter and watercolourist often known as "Baker of Leamington" or "Landscape Baker".

Born in Harborne

Harborne

Harborne is an area three miles southwest from Birmingham city centre, England. It is a Birmingham City Council ward in the formal district and in the parliamentary constituency of Birmingham Edgbaston.- Geography :...

, Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, Baker was a student of Vincent Barber

Vincent Barber

Joseph Vincent Barber , known as Vincent Barber, was an English landscape painter and art teacher.Born in Birmingham, the son of artist and drawing master Joseph Barber, he took over the running of his father's drawing academy in Great Charles Street on the elder Barber's death in 1811...

(1788–1838) at the Barber family's Charles Street Academy in Birmingham. Exhibiting publicly with the Birmingham Society of Artists from 1827 onwards, he painted landscapes throughout Warwickshire

Warwickshire

Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...

, the Midlands and the Welsh border regions and occasionally producing depictions of the Lake District, Scotland and Ireland. More often than not Baker's landscapes include cattle, although sheep and human figures are also fairly common in his works.

Baker kept comprehensive records of his work and usually signed each major picture "T Baker", dated it to the year and numbered it on the back. Smaller pieces, studies and pencil sketches tend to be signed "T.B." (sometimes to be found playfully hidden around gravestones, fenceposts, treeroots etc.) and dated more precisely. His diaries and notes – which contain an 800-strong list of his major works - are held in the Birmingham City Art Gallery while the art gallery at the Royal Pump Rooms

Royal Pump Rooms

The Royal Pump Rooms is a building in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. It was the most famous of several spa baths opened in Leamington between the late-18th and mid-19th centuries. People would travel from throughout the country, and indeed Europe, to benefit from treatments using the...

in Leamington Spa

Leamington Spa

Royal Leamington Spa, commonly known as Leamington Spa or Leamington or Leam to locals, is a spa town in central Warwickshire, England. Formerly known as Leamington Priors, its expansion began following the popularisation of the medicinal qualities of its water by Dr Kerr in 1784, and by Dr Lambe...

has a collection of over sixty Baker landscapes, a couple of which are nearly always on display in the Art Gallery. The art historian Alison Plumridge and local historian Charles Lines have both highlighted how Baker provided artistic tutoring to the local middle classes in order to supplement his earnings from major local patrons such as Lord Leigh. In terms of wider success, Baker exhibited four oil paintings at the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

between 1831 and 1858 with his work appearing more frequently at the British Institution

British Institution

The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...

(where he exhibited 19 paintings) and the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists

Royal Birmingham Society of Artists

The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists or RBSA is a learned society of artists and an art gallery based in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, England. it is both a registered charity. and a registered company The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists or RBSA is a learned society of artists and an...

.

After his premature death in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire

Warwickshire

, at the age of 55 (amid suggestions of murder that led to the suicide of his housekeeper, Hannah Hewitt), Baker's body was returned to his birthplace and buried in close proximity to the famous Midlands landscape artist David Cox

David Cox (artist)

- David Cox Junior :David Cox had a son of the same name who followed his calling as a watercolour painter. He was born in Dulwich, but educated in Hereford. He exhibited in London from 1827, although today he is known mainly through association with his father. He died in Streatham on 4 December...

at St. Peter's Church in Harborne

Harborne

, Birmingham.

The Birmingham-based photographer and landscape painter Edmund Smith-Baker (usually given as E. S. Baker) was the eldest of Baker's five illegitimate children by Elizabeth Alice Smith, a lodging housekeeper from Cubbington

Cubbington

Cubbington is a village and civil parish with a population of 4,034 adjoining the north-eastern outskirts of Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. Welsh Road, running through the village crossroads, may have been an old sheep drovers' route connecting London and Wales...

. Edmund Smith-Baker ran a studio on Bristol Street in Birmingham together with his younger brother Thomas William, where – alongside the production of carte de visite

Carte de visite

The carte de visite was a type of small photograph which was patented in Paris, France by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero...

photographs – he is believed to have completed new and previously unfinished Baker landscapes. Some of these works are signed "E.S. Baker" while others display a rather more decorative signature of "E.S.B" in which the "S" is combined with an enlarged "B".

As a last point of interest with regard to Thomas Baker 'of Leamington', Charles Lines has suggested that, prior to his relationship with Elizabeth Alice Smith, the artist had previously been married at either Leamington All-Saints or Lillington

Lillington, Warwickshire

Lillington is an area of the town of Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, England. Lillington was formerly a village which existed before the time of the Domesday Book , until it was subsumed into Leamington Spa, the parish being incorporated into that borough in 1890.-Geography:Lillington itself has...

Church and produced two legitimate sons. However, there is no evidence to support this.

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