Cyrus Baldridge

Cyrus Leroy Baldridge (born May 27, 1889 in Alton , Illinois , † June 6, 1975 in Santa Fe , New Mexico ) was an American illustrator , painter , graphic artist and cosmopolitan .

Life

Cyrus Leoy Baldridge was a son of the kitchenware seller Cyrus Baldridge and his wife Eliza Burgdorf. He had received art lessons from an early age, including with the illustrator Frank Holme in Chicago . He later studied English Literature at the University of Chicago on a scholarship . After graduating, he worked as a war illustrator with the American forces in Europe on the French front during the First World War . In Paris , Baldridge worked for the Stars and Stripes , an eight-page troop newspaper. Within a very short time he made the acquaintance of journalists Harold Ross , Alexander Woollcott , Franklin Pierce Adams and Jane Grant .

In the early 1920s, Baldridge went on a world tour with his wife, Caroline Singer, a writer. They made stops in the following countries: Japanese Empire , Republic of China , Chosen , Afghanistan , Persia and North Africa . In 1925 he stayed in Beijing , where he took a number of pictures depicting well-known places in Beijing. Back in New York City , Baldridge worked as a book illustrator, painter and graphic artist. In 1947 he wrote his autobiography Time and Chance .

In 1951, the Baldridge couple moved to Santa Fe, where his wife continued to write articles for The New York Times and The New Yorker . He painted and drew obsessively, repeating, varying and quoting his subjects over and over again. After the death of his wife in 1962, he continued to withdraw into his work. In the 1970s, Baldridge had a number of minor strokes and dementia difficulties ; June 6, 1975, he committed suicide with his gun suicide .

Literature (selection)

• Time and chance
• White Africans and Black
• A turn to the east
• All the world is Isfahan
• Boomba Lives in Africa
• Ali lives in Iran

Book illustrations

• 1937 Hajji Baba of Isfahan by James Morier
• 1941 Translations from the Chinese by Arthur Waley
• 1942 Santa Clause Comes to America by Caroline Singer

Works (selection)

• 

  Cyrus Baldridge at the age of 10

literature

• Amy Reigle Stephens: The New Wave - Twentieth Century Japanese Prints from the Robert O. Muller Collection , Bamboo Publishing Ltd. London and Hotei - Japanese Prints ISBN 1-870076-19-2
• Helen Merritt and Nanako Yamada: Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints 1900-1975 , University of Hawaii Press (1995) ISBN 0-8248-1732-X
• Richard Lane: Images from the Floating World: The Japanese Print , Friborg (1978) ISBN 0-914427-54-7
• P. Roberts Laurance: A Dictionary of Japanese Artists , John Weatherhill Inc., New York (1976)
• Frances Blakemore: Who is Who in Modern Japanese Prints , John Weatherhill, New York and Tokyo (1975) ISBN 0-8348-0101-9

Web links

• artnet.de - Cyrus Baldridge