C. H. Collins Baker

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Charles Henry Collins Baker
Born24 January 1880
Ilminster
Died3 July 1959
Finchley
Academic work
Notable worksLely and the Stuart Portrait Painters

Charles Henry Collins Baker

CVO
(24 January 1880 – 3 July 1959) was an English art historian and painter.

Life and work

Charles Henry Collins Baker was born in

D. S. MacColl, and became an assistant and secretary to Sir Charles Holroyd, Director of the National Gallery. While working at the Gallery he befriended E. M. Forster, who was working there as a cataloguer and guard.[3]

In 1912, Collins Baker wrote Lely and the Stuart Portrait Painters, considered to be his most important book; Ellis Waterhouse called it the "last great scholarly monument" of "the last great age of the self-taught scholar in England, before it was permissible to call oneself an art historian".[2] From 1914 he held the post of Keeper of the National Gallery, and was retained when Charles Holmes succeeded Holroyd as Director in 1916. Collins Baker and Holroyd have been described as the "driving forces of the Gallery" of that period.[3] From 1928 he took on the position of Surveyor of the King's Pictures.[2] Oliver Millar, a later holder of the post, described him as "a nice and kind man, but untrained in scholarly method."[4] He was a senior research associate in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, from 1932 to 1949. He died at his home in Finchley, Middlesex, in 1959.[2]

Publications

References

  1. ^ Bennett, Shelley M. (2001). "Charles Henry Collins Baker: Biographical and Bibliographical Note". Huntington Library Quarterly. 64 (3/4). University of California Press: 501–5.
    JSTOR 3817923
    .
  2. ^ required.)
  3. ^ a b "C. H. Collins Baker". Dictionary of Art Historians. Retrieved 12 January 2015.
  4. ^ Millar, Oliver (1977). The Queen's Pictures. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Cultural offices
Preceded by
Hawes Harison Turner
Keeper of the National Gallery
1914–1934
Succeeded by
Edwin Glasgow
Court offices
Preceded by Surveyor of the King's Pictures
1928–1934
Succeeded by