William Bliss Baker

William Bliss Baker was a noted landscape painter who had gained a distinguished reputation when his promising life as an up and coming young artist was cut short at the age of twenty-seven in an ice skating accident. Born in New York City in 1859 Baker spent his childhood in Ballston Spa, a small village in Saratoga County, New York. At seventeen Baker entered the National Academy of Design where he was awarded the Elliott Prize for drawing the following year in 1879. Baker furthered his artistic studies under the tutelage of Mauritz de Haas, the talented Dutch-American marine painter (1832-1895). Baker is also known to have studied under the talented panoramic landscape painter Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902). Baker kept a studio north of Albany of New York. When Baker won the prestigious Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy of Design, he established his reputation at the forefront of landscape painting.