Baker, Robert P.

Robert Peter Baker was born in London in 1886. Both his father and grandfather were sculptors, as was his brother Bryant. Baker studied at Lambeth School of Art, the City and Guild Technical Institute, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, becoming especially adept at Gothic church architectural sculpture; many restored English cathedrals show his skill, among them Beverly Minster and Selby Abbey, both in Yorkshire. He was also talented in drawing; in 1917 he collaborated with James H. Worthingon to produce an illustrated book of poems entitle Poetry, Prose, Paint and Pencil . After a number of visits to the United States he settled in Massachusetts, where he died in 1940.

Baker's sculpture was compared with both classical Greek work and with Rodin ( Sculpture of Today, 1931). A 1948 biographical sketch says of him, "Baker's individual inclination was toward the ideal and creative in art...The story of mankind was his desperate concern...His art was highly finished, with a most delicate sense of proportion, facile, spontaneous and unlabored, expressive of the human emotions and of rare sensibility." ( White's Biography, 1948, p. 219)

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