William Baptiste Baird On Sale

William Baptiste Baird was a well-known American painter of landscapes and genre scenes, who lived and exhibited almost exclusively in France and England. Born in Chicago in 1847, Baird began his professional artistic career in 1866 as a draftsman for a wood-engraver. At the same time, he studied painting and exhibited several of his small works in storefront windows. Baird’s inherent talent and his nascent career as a local artist caught the attention of two Chicagoan philanthropists, Mr. W. B. Howard and General John M. Corse, who provided the funds for Baird to travel and study in France for three years. Baird settled in Paris and studied at the studio of the Academic history painter Adolphe Yvon, whose monumental nationalistic military scenes were favored by Emperor Napoleon III during the Second French Empire. He began exhibiting at the Salon in 1872 with a historically themed genre scene entitled, Le retour du prisonnier (i). Baird quickly found much professional success in France, continuing to exhibit at the Salon for the next 20 years, especially peasant genre scenes and landscapes depicting the rural areas outside of Paris, such as the village of Barbizon and the Forest of Fontainebleau. Baird was a very versatile artist, and although he is known for his Barbizon-style landscapes and peasant genre scenes in France, the artist also exhibited in London and the United States. From 1877 to 1899, Baird exhibited Victorian-themed domestic genre scenes at the Royal Academy of Arts, including titles such as The Cares of a Family, “Catch me if you can,” Take Care! and Taking Life Easy. During the same years, he exhibited in Paris and London, Baird also participated in annual exhibitions in the United States. At the National Academy of Design in New York and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Baird exhibited pictures of cattle and poultry and cock-fighting scenes. These animal paintings were coveted by American collectors, including the Philadelphian Harrison Earl, who owned a series of five cock-fighting pictures. By 1879, Baird had settled into a studio in Paris at 3 rue d’Odessa in the neighborhood of Montparnasse. He last exhibited at the Salon and the Royal Academy of Arts in 1899 and died in Paris that same year. His artworks are a part of the collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; the Lightner Museum, St. Augustine, Florida; the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore; the Sheldon Swope Museum, Terre Haute, Indiana; the Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, New York; the Wright Museum of Art, Beloit College, Wisconsin; the Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota, Duluth, Minnesota and the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut.

Figurative art, as opposed to abstract art, retains features from the observable world in its representational depictions of subject matter. Most commonly, figurative paintings reference and explore the human body, but they can also include landscapes, architecture, plants and animals — all portrayed with realism.

While the oldest figurative art dates back tens of thousands of years to cave wall paintings, figurative works made from observation became especially prominent in the early Renaissance. Artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance masters created naturalistic representations of their subjects.

Pablo Picasso is lauded for laying the foundation for modern figurative art in the 1920s. Although abstracted, this work held a strong connection to representing people and other subjects. Other famous figurative artists include Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Figurative art in the 20th century would span such diverse genres as Expressionism, Pop art and Surrealism.

Today, a number of figural artists — such as Sedrick Huckaby, Daisy Patton and Eileen Cooper — are making art that uses the human body as its subject.

Because figurative art represents subjects from the real world, natural colors are common in these paintings. A piece of figurative art can be an exciting starting point for setting a tone and creating a color palette in a room.

Browse an extensive collection of figurative paintings on 1stDibs.