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M. Louise Baker

March 03, 2023

M. (Mary) Louise Baker (1872 – 1962) was an American archaeological illustrator, resident artist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (1908-1936), and an art teacher at the George School.[1][2]

M. Louise Baker
Ostrich shell with mosaic incrustation,
illustration by M. Louis Baker
Born
Mary Louise Baker

(1872-08-04)August 4, 1872
Alliance, Ohio
DiedJuly 15, 1962(1962-07-15) (aged 89)
West Chester, Pennsylvania
Alma materPennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Known forArchaeological Illustrations, children's illustrations, poetry
Notable workMaya Pottery in the University of Pennsylvania Museum and in Other Collections (3 volumes)

Education and career

 
Nio at Nara, 1902, drawn by M. Louise Baker, while a Pupil of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art

Mary Louise Baker was born on August 4, 1872, in Alliance, Ohio. In 1892, at the age of 19, she struck out on her own, first to Chester County, Pennsylvania, where she completed her education and taught primary school, and then on to Philadelphia, where in 1900 she enrolled in the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art.[2] She won several awards for her designs and illustrations and was awarded a scholarship.[1] In 1902, M. Louise Baker secured a job from C.B. Moore, restoring pottery and drawing illustrations for his popular "oversized, well-illustrated volumes" published by the Academy of Natural Sciences.[3][note 1] In 1903, she obtained a teaching position at the George School, a Quaker boarding school near Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In 1908, she was hired as a part-time illustrator by the archaeologist George Byron Gordon, then the General Curator of American Archaeology, at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, where she worked as the Museum Artist until 1936. She worked as an archaeological illustrator, did illustrations for Museum publications and exhibits, restoration work, and also made models and replicas.[2][4][5]

Baker wrote and illustrated stories and poems for children throughout her career, and published illustrations in the Children's Page of the Youth's Companion Magazine and other magazines for children.[6][4][7][8] Baker also led groups of women on summer tours of European museums.[1]

During the First World War, between 1919 and 1920, Baker served with the American Friends Service Committee in France, where she ran an Embroidery Depot for refugees at Verdun and Clermont-en-Argonne, in northeast France near the Belgian border. In August, 1920, she returned to Philadelphia with E. Constance Allen, of Dublin, Ireland. The two had a lifelong relationship and worked together at the George School.[9][1]

Major illustrations and travel

Before color photography was widely available, archaeologists brought illustrators to the excavation sites to document the paint schemes on vessels, shards, architectural ornaments and murals. Among the field’s most sought-after painters was a rangy, tall, irascible Philadelphian, M. Louise Baker.
— Eve M. Kahn, Diaries of M. Louise Baker, The New York Times[10]

M. Louise Baker undertook her first work for the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in 1908 on the Museum's Nubian pottery collection. This work was at the request of David Randall-MacIver, who was then the director of the Museum's Nubian expedition. She earned $80 a month.[2] These illustrations were subsequently published in Leonard Woolley and David Randall-MacIver's reports on Karanog, Karanôg: the Romano-Nubian cemetery (1910) and Buhen (1911).[11][12]

Baker's work at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology attracted wider notice, leading many "other ... archaeologists, who had only seen examples of her published work, [to] request... her participation in future efforts."[5] Baker worked in pen and ink, charcoal and watercolor. Her three-dimensional and trompe-l'œil water colors and 'roll out' illustrations of ceramic vessels [note 2] were particularly admired as "both scientifically valuable and also exquisite art."[9][13][1]

Mayan ceramics

In 1931, M. Louise Baker traveled to New Orleans, where she painted Maya material at Tulane University's Middle American Research Institute. Next she traveled to Mérida, Yucatán, in Mexico, and painted and drew Maya pottery in the State Museum and private collections. Next she traveled to Guatemala City, Guatemala, to make ink and watercolor illustrations of pots from the Carnegie Institution of Washington expedition to Uaxactun and from Cobán, held in the private collection of Erwin Paul Dieseldorff. Her paintings and illustrations of Maya pottery were subsequently published by the University of Pennsylvania Museum between 1925 and 1943 in several volumes of Examples of Maya Pottery in the Museum and Other Collections;[2] several others appeared in the second volume of E.P. Dieseldorff's Kunst und Religion der Mayavölker (1931).[14][15] Still others have been more recently reproduced.[16][17]

The Royal Tombs of Ur

 
Ram in a Thicket, Ur excavations (1900), drawn by M. Louise Baker
 
Beads (Chapter 18) Ur excavations (1900), drawn by M. Louise Baker

In 1932, Baker traveled to the British Museum in London, England, and then on to Baghdad, Iraq, to paint materials held there from the Joint Expedition of the Penn Museum and British Museum to Mesopotamia. Leonard Woolley served as the excavation director for the Expedition, which uncovered the Royal Tombs of Ur.

During her return from Iraq, Baker visited museums and private collections in Germany, Spain, France, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and England to add to her illustrations of Maya ceramics.[18]

Later life and death

M. Louise Baker left the Penn Museum in 1936 when, owing to her failing eyesight, she had difficulty producing illustrations. She retired from the George School two years later, in 1939, together with E. Constance Allen, who was dean there from 1925 to 1938.[19] Baker and Allen purchased a home together in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. For the next ten years, Baker taught classes on writing and illustration, carpentry, furniture making, metal working, and ceramics. She also gave talks on local and Quaker history and her archaeological adventures, acted in amateur theater productions in Chester County, and led tours to European museums.[2]

Baker suffered eye problems ranging from cataracts to glaucoma throughout her life. Doctors hit upon the idea of applying leeches to her temples to alleviate her symptoms.[13]

"The huge leeches were ravenous when released from the box, and quickly fastened themselves to my temples by triangular incisions," she wrote. "In my most successful nightmares, I recall these leeches."
— M. Louise Baker, quoted in Crimmins, 2017[13]

She was completely blind by 1949. Baker and E. Constance Allen spent their final years together at The Hickman, a Quaker retirement home in West Chester, Pennsylvania.[2] M. Louise Baker died in her ninetieth year on July 15th, 1962.[20]


Further reading

  • Baker, M. Louise (1936) Lintel 3 Restored. . .and Why: An Artist's Interpretation. University Museum Bulletin, 6(4):120-121.
  • Elin Danien's (2006) excellent short biography of M. Louise Baker. Danien, Elin C. (2006). Paintings of Maya Pottery: The Art and Career of M. Louise Baker (PDF). Los Angeles: Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies (FAMSI), Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
  • The University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives hold more than 500 works by Baker, spanning the years from 1889 to 1962. The collection includes sketches, commercial art, holiday cards, various illustrated stories and poems, watercolors, photographs, her traveling valise, personal letters, a collection of 54 detailed diaries from 1889 to 1960 and an unpublished memoir, and all her work for the Museum’s Maya Pottery publications.

Notes

  1. ^ See, for example, Earle, Evan Fay; Davis, Mary B. (2006). "Guide to the Clarence Bloomfield Moore Collection, 1891-1918". cornell.edu. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. Retrieved February 17, 2017., which includes a discussion of Moore's working relationship with Baker and a reprint of H. Newell Wardle's "Clarence Bloomfield Moore (1852-1936)," originally printed in the Bulletin of the Philadelphia Anthropological Society (vol. 9, no. 2, March 1956)
  2. ^ This is a technique by which a cylinder is extended, or 'rolled out,' into a flat plane. It is a predecessor to rollout photography. See, for example, the 'roll out' illustrations contained in Moore, Clarence Bloomfield (1903). Certain Aboriginal Mounds of the Florida Central West-coast. Philadelphia: P.C. Stockhausen. ISBN 9781404745056. and Moore, Clarence Bloomfield (1907). Moundville Revisited: Crystal River Revisited. Mounds of the Lower Chattahoochee and Lower Flint Rivers. Notes on the Ten Thousand Islands, Florida. Philadelphia: P.C. Stockhausen.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e T, B. (2018). "Illustrating the Maya". trowelblazers.com. Retrieved January 27, 2018.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Danien, Elin C. (2006). "PAINTINGS OF MAYA POTTERY: The Art and Career of M. Louise Baker" (PDF). www.famsi.org. Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies. Retrieved February 15, 2017.
  3. ^ Mitchem, Jeffrey M. (2015). "Clarence Bloomfield Moore (1852–1936)". The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.
  4. ^ a b "M. Louise Baker papers (finding aid)". dla.library.upenn.edu. University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives. May 13, 2013. Retrieved February 15, 2017.
  5. ^ a b Price, Lee (2010). "Scientific Illustration at its Best: Conserving the Work of M. Louise Baker" (PDF). ccaha.org. Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts. Retrieved February 16, 2017.
  6. ^ Baker, M. Louise (April 27, 1916). "When Betty kicked The Rug, Art by Mary Louise Baker". The Youth's Companion. p. 233.
  7. ^ Baker, M. Louise (September 2, 1915). "Persimmons". The Youth's Companion. Vol. 89, no. 2. Perry Mason Company. p. 449.
  8. ^ Baker, M. Louise (September 1, 1915). "A Mystery". South Dakota Educator. Vol. 29, no. 1. South Dakota Education Association & the Teachers' Reading Circle. p. 20. Retrieved February 16, 2017.
  9. ^ a b Penn Museum Archives (March 2, 2017). "Gordon%2C%20G.%20B.%20%28George%20Byron%29%2C%201870-1927"&id=PACSCL_UPENN_MUSEUM_PUMu1107& "M. Louise Baker papers" (PDF). dla.library.upenn.edu. University of Pennsylvania, Penn Museum Archives. Retrieved June 5, 2017.
  10. ^ Kahn, Eve M. (October 20, 2011). "Johan Zoffany, Portraitist; Diaries of M. Louise Baker". The New York Times. New York. Retrieved June 4, 2017.
  11. ^ Woolley, Leonard C.; Randall-MacIver, David (1919). Karanòg: Plates. Philadelphia: University Museum.
  12. ^ Woolley, Leonard C.; Randall-MacIver, David (1911). Karanòg: the Romano-Nubian cemetery : Plates. Philadelphia: University Museum.
  13. ^ a b c Crimmins, Peter (February 13, 2017). "Illustrious life of Penn Museum artist no open-and-shut case". News Works. Philadelphia. Retrieved June 5, 2017.
  14. ^ Dieseldorff, E.P. (1933). Kunst und Religion der Mayavölker II: Die Copaner Denkmäler, Copan (Guatemala). Berlin: Verlag. ISBN 3709198194.
  15. ^ ahximbalmaya (September 13, 2016). "Maya Object of the Month 2006, No. 1 (September)". mayanewsupdates.blogspot.com. Maya News Updates. Retrieved June 4, 2017.
  16. ^ Danien, Elin C. (2002). Guide to the Mesoamerican Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. p. 88. ISBN 1931707294.
  17. ^ Morley, Sylvanus Griswold; Brainerd, George Walton (1983). The Ancient Maya. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 401. ISBN 0804711372. M.Louise Baker maya.
  18. ^ Dosker, Caroline G. (1985). "Mary Louise Baker and the Maya, From the Archives". Expedition Magazine. Vol. 27, no. 3.
  19. ^ "George School in 1935-1939". georgeschool.org. George School. 2017. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  20. ^ "Deaths" (PDF). Friends Journal. 8 (16): 359. August 15, 1962. Retrieved June 5, 2017.

March 03, 2023
louise, baker, mary, louise, baker, 1872, 1962, american, archaeological, illustrator, resident, artist, university, pennsylvania, museum, archaeology, anthropology, 1908, 1936, teacher, george, school, ostrich, shell, with, mosaic, incrustation, illustration,. M Mary Louise Baker 1872 1962 was an American archaeological illustrator resident artist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology 1908 1936 and an art teacher at the George School 1 2 M Louise BakerOstrich shell with mosaic incrustation illustration by M Louis BakerBornMary Louise Baker 1872 08 04 August 4 1872Alliance OhioDiedJuly 15 1962 1962 07 15 aged 89 West Chester PennsylvaniaAlma materPennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine ArtsKnown forArchaeological Illustrations children s illustrations poetryNotable workMaya Pottery in the University of Pennsylvania Museum and in Other Collections 3 volumes Contents 1 Education and career 2 Major illustrations and travel 2 1 Mayan ceramics 2 2 The Royal Tombs of Ur 3 Later life and death 4 Further reading 5 Notes 6 ReferencesEducation and career Edit Nio at Nara 1902 drawn by M Louise Baker while a Pupil of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art Mary Louise Baker was born on August 4 1872 in Alliance Ohio In 1892 at the age of 19 she struck out on her own first to Chester County Pennsylvania where she completed her education and taught primary school and then on to Philadelphia where in 1900 she enrolled in the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art 2 She won several awards for her designs and illustrations and was awarded a scholarship 1 In 1902 M Louise Baker secured a job from C B Moore restoring pottery and drawing illustrations for his popular oversized well illustrated volumes published by the Academy of Natural Sciences 3 note 1 In 1903 she obtained a teaching position at the George School a Quaker boarding school near Newtown Bucks County Pennsylvania In 1908 she was hired as a part time illustrator by the archaeologist George Byron Gordon then the General Curator of American Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology where she worked as the Museum Artist until 1936 She worked as an archaeological illustrator did illustrations for Museum publications and exhibits restoration work and also made models and replicas 2 4 5 Baker wrote and illustrated stories and poems for children throughout her career and published illustrations in the Children s Page of the Youth s Companion Magazine and other magazines for children 6 4 7 8 Baker also led groups of women on summer tours of European museums 1 During the First World War between 1919 and 1920 Baker served with the American Friends Service Committee in France where she ran an Embroidery Depot for refugees at Verdun and Clermont en Argonne in northeast France near the Belgian border In August 1920 she returned to Philadelphia with E Constance Allen of Dublin Ireland The two had a lifelong relationship and worked together at the George School 9 1 Major illustrations and travel EditBefore color photography was widely available archaeologists brought illustrators to the excavation sites to document the paint schemes on vessels shards architectural ornaments and murals Among the field s most sought after painters was a rangy tall irascible Philadelphian M Louise Baker Eve M Kahn Diaries of M Louise Baker The New York Times 10 M Louise Baker undertook her first work for the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in 1908 on the Museum s Nubian pottery collection This work was at the request of David Randall MacIver who was then the director of the Museum s Nubian expedition She earned 80 a month 2 These illustrations were subsequently published in Leonard Woolley and David Randall MacIver s reports on Karanog Karanog the Romano Nubian cemetery 1910 and Buhen 1911 11 12 Baker s work at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology attracted wider notice leading many other archaeologists who had only seen examples of her published work to request her participation in future efforts 5 Baker worked in pen and ink charcoal and watercolor Her three dimensional and trompe l œil water colors and roll out illustrations of ceramic vessels note 2 were particularly admired as both scientifically valuable and also exquisite art 9 13 1 Mayan ceramics Edit In 1931 M Louise Baker traveled to New Orleans where she painted Maya material at Tulane University s Middle American Research Institute Next she traveled to Merida Yucatan in Mexico and painted and drew Maya pottery in the State Museum and private collections Next she traveled to Guatemala City Guatemala to make ink and watercolor illustrations of pots from the Carnegie Institution of Washington expedition to Uaxactun and from Coban held in the private collection of Erwin Paul Dieseldorff Her paintings and illustrations of Maya pottery were subsequently published by the University of Pennsylvania Museum between 1925 and 1943 in several volumes of Examples of Maya Pottery in the Museum and Other Collections 2 several others appeared in the second volume of E P Dieseldorff s Kunst und Religion der Mayavolker 1931 14 15 Still others have been more recently reproduced 16 17 The Royal Tombs of Ur Edit Ram in a Thicket Ur excavations 1900 drawn by M Louise Baker Beads Chapter 18 Ur excavations 1900 drawn by M Louise Baker In 1932 Baker traveled to the British Museum in London England and then on to Baghdad Iraq to paint materials held there from the Joint Expedition of the Penn Museum and British Museum to Mesopotamia Leonard Woolley served as the excavation director for the Expedition which uncovered the Royal Tombs of Ur During her return from Iraq Baker visited museums and private collections in Germany Spain France Sweden Denmark the Netherlands and England to add to her illustrations of Maya ceramics 18 Later life and death EditM Louise Baker left the Penn Museum in 1936 when owing to her failing eyesight she had difficulty producing illustrations She retired from the George School two years later in 1939 together with E Constance Allen who was dean there from 1925 to 1938 19 Baker and Allen purchased a home together in Wallingford Pennsylvania For the next ten years Baker taught classes on writing and illustration carpentry furniture making metal working and ceramics She also gave talks on local and Quaker history and her archaeological adventures acted in amateur theater productions in Chester County and led tours to European museums 2 Baker suffered eye problems ranging from cataracts to glaucoma throughout her life Doctors hit upon the idea of applying leeches to her temples to alleviate her symptoms 13 The huge leeches were ravenous when released from the box and quickly fastened themselves to my temples by triangular incisions she wrote In my most successful nightmares I recall these leeches M Louise Baker quoted in Crimmins 2017 13 She was completely blind by 1949 Baker and E Constance Allen spent their final years together at The Hickman a Quaker retirement home in West Chester Pennsylvania 2 M Louise Baker died in her ninetieth year on July 15th 1962 20 Further reading EditBaker M Louise 1936 Lintel 3 Restored and Why An Artist s Interpretation University Museum Bulletin 6 4 120 121 Elin Danien s 2006 excellent short biography of M Louise Baker Danien Elin C 2006 Paintings of Maya Pottery The Art and Career of M Louise Baker PDF Los Angeles Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies FAMSI Los Angeles County Museum of Art The University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives hold more than 500 works by Baker spanning the years from 1889 to 1962 The collection includes sketches commercial art holiday cards various illustrated stories and poems watercolors photographs her traveling valise personal letters a collection of 54 detailed diaries from 1889 to 1960 and an unpublished memoir and all her work for the Museum s Maya Pottery publications Notes Edit See for example Earle Evan Fay Davis Mary B 2006 Guide to the Clarence Bloomfield Moore Collection 1891 1918 cornell edu Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections Cornell University Library Retrieved February 17 2017 which includes a discussion of Moore s working relationship with Baker and a reprint of H Newell Wardle s Clarence Bloomfield Moore 1852 1936 originally printed in the Bulletin of the Philadelphia Anthropological Society vol 9 no 2 March 1956 This is a technique by which a cylinder is extended or rolled out into a flat plane It is a predecessor to rollout photography See for example the roll out illustrations contained in Moore Clarence Bloomfield 1903 Certain Aboriginal Mounds of the Florida Central West coast Philadelphia P C Stockhausen ISBN 9781404745056 and Moore Clarence Bloomfield 1907 Moundville Revisited Crystal River Revisited Mounds of the Lower Chattahoochee and Lower Flint Rivers Notes on the Ten Thousand Islands Florida Philadelphia P C Stockhausen References Edit a b c d e T B 2018 Illustrating the Maya trowelblazers com Retrieved January 27 2018 a b c d e f g Danien Elin C 2006 PAINTINGS OF MAYA POTTERY The Art and Career of M Louise Baker PDF www famsi org Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies Retrieved February 15 2017 Mitchem Jeffrey M 2015 Clarence Bloomfield Moore 1852 1936 The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History amp Culture Butler Center for Arkansas Studies a b M Louise Baker papers finding aid dla library upenn edu University of Pennsylvania Penn Museum Archives May 13 2013 Retrieved February 15 2017 a b Price Lee 2010 Scientific Illustration at its Best Conserving the Work of M Louise Baker PDF ccaha org Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts Retrieved February 16 2017 Baker M Louise April 27 1916 When Betty kicked The Rug Art by Mary Louise Baker The Youth s Companion p 233 Baker M Louise September 2 1915 Persimmons The Youth s Companion Vol 89 no 2 Perry Mason Company p 449 Baker M Louise September 1 1915 A Mystery South Dakota Educator Vol 29 no 1 South Dakota Education Association amp the Teachers Reading Circle p 20 Retrieved February 16 2017 a b Penn Museum Archives March 2 2017 Gordon 2C 20G 20B 20 28George 20Byron 29 2C 201870 1927 amp id PACSCL UPENN MUSEUM PUMu1107 amp M Louise Baker papers PDF dla library upenn edu University of Pennsylvania Penn Museum Archives Retrieved June 5 2017 Kahn Eve M October 20 2011 Johan Zoffany Portraitist Diaries of M Louise Baker The New York Times New York Retrieved June 4 2017 Woolley Leonard C Randall MacIver David 1919 Karanog Plates Philadelphia University Museum Woolley Leonard C Randall MacIver David 1911 Karanog the Romano Nubian cemetery Plates Philadelphia University Museum a b c Crimmins Peter February 13 2017 Illustrious life of Penn Museum artist no open and shut case News Works Philadelphia Retrieved June 5 2017 Dieseldorff E P 1933 Kunst und Religion der Mayavolker II Die Copaner Denkmaler Copan Guatemala Berlin Verlag ISBN 3709198194 ahximbalmaya September 13 2016 Maya Object of the Month 2006 No 1 September mayanewsupdates blogspot com Maya News Updates Retrieved June 4 2017 Danien Elin C 2002 Guide to the Mesoamerican Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology p 88 ISBN 1931707294 Morley Sylvanus Griswold Brainerd George Walton 1983 The Ancient Maya Stanford Stanford University Press p 401 ISBN 0804711372 M Louise Baker maya Dosker Caroline G 1985 Mary Louise Baker and the Maya From the Archives Expedition Magazine Vol 27 no 3 George School in 1935 1939 georgeschool org George School 2017 Retrieved June 6 2017 Deaths PDF Friends Journal 8 16 359 August 15 1962 Retrieved June 5 2017 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title M Louise Baker amp oldid 1137349574, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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