Walter Emerson Baum
American (1884-1956)
A prominent member of the New Hope Landscape School, Baum was born in Sellersville, Pennsylvania in 1884. Baum studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, as well as with William Thomas Trego. Baum was a member of the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, and during the 1930s and 40s, he helped found the Lehigh Arts Alliance. Along with being an accomplished artist, Baum was a museum director at the Allentown Museum of Art, the founder of the Baum School of Art, and the art editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin. Although Baum did travel to Germany, France and Switzerland, he was most at home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and the vast majority of his landscape paintings are of the area around Sellersville. Baum worked in all weather conditions en plein air, capturing the rural landscape of the surrounding countryside.