Huntley BALDWIN

Huntley BALDWIN (1939-2011) was born in Washington, D.C. in 1939. It was there he began his art training at the Georgetown studio of Ralph de Burgos. He studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago and then for three years at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles.


After graduating, BALDWIN returned to Chicago and began what would become a highly successful career in advertising with a prestigious agency, but it was a vacation trip to Europe that would launch him on a second career as a fine artist. After retiring from the advertising business in 1994, BALDWIN began painting full time, exhibiting, and selling his work. In 1995, only a year after retirement, Huntley BALDWIN proceeded to show his work at the gallery level, realizing an overwhelming demand for his paintings, which have consistently exceeded the supply and increased in value.


While European scenes remain a favorite subject for BALDWIN, he does not paint the “grand view”, but rather prefers scenes of everyday life: a street corner, a store front, a small café. BALDWIN'S perspective of these scenes are personalized unlike a mere photograph of the same image. Whether the composition is of a familiar café frequented often, or a street corner one has never walked upon nor seen, the viewer is likely to feel an intimate connection to the picture. Executed with his own brand of “clear light and crisp color”, BALDWIN makes shadows dance as one senses the warmth of the sunlight that is ever-changing, yet always present.


Though one is immediately aware of the impressive formal discipline, BALDWIN'S paintings contain an appeal that, at first, may be difficult to define. The subject matter of the work is reminiscent of Edward Hopper, but BALDWIN'S use of color, light, and meticulous attention to detail transform what would be nostalgia into a tangible observation, revitalizing a pleasant memory into present time. Stylistically speaking, BALDWIN falls somewhere between the looser strokes of Hopper and the painstaking precision of the photorealist Richard Estes, who also had a predilection for store fronts. Like these masters, BALDWIN shows the same uncanny ability to strike a responsive chord with both his technique and imagery. With his own European “vernacular architecture”, BALDWIN brings to the observer a palpable atmosphere that seems to have previously existed only in the mind’s eye. Unlike many other painters of similar subject matter, BALDWIN captures a fleeting moment and, while employing his own unique vision, romances that image and preserves it for the viewer by immortalizing it forever in his painting.


Today, BALDWIN’s paintings have found their way into hundreds of collections throughout the United States and abroad. Edward Montgomery Fine Art is proud to hold the distinction of being the exclusive gallery for the work of the distinguished painter Huntley BALDWIN.

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