1899-1983
Baker was one of a contingent of early AAN artists from the Baltimore -Washington area. She was a member of the 45 Group and exhibited in their shows at the Kenneth Taylor Galleries in 1947, 1949 and 1950. She was elected to AAN membership and to the Advisory Committee to the Executive Committee at their first meeting on July 3, 1946. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Baker studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with Hugh Breckenridge, and with André L’Hote in Paris in 1925. She was active as a teacher at the Bryn Mawr School for Girls in Baltimore, from 1929 to 1937; St. Timothy’s School in Catonsville, from 1931 to 1945; and the American University Art School from 1945 to 1967, with sabbaticals to Europe in 1952 and 1962. Among her pupils was Willem De Looper. In 1935 she received a prize from the Washington Society of Independent Artists, and in 1945 she received one from the Baltimore Museum of Art; in 1926 she won a fellowship gold medal from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for a self-portrait. In 1945 she founded the American University Art School in Washington D.C. with sculptor William Calfee.