Cyrus Leroy Baldridge, Female Impersonator, Tokyo (Etching)

Pencil signed, titled and dated by the artist. The Baldridge-style was considerably influenced by his exposure to the spare lines of the Japanese art form. For a short period in the 1920s, he worked with Watanabe Shozaburo in Tokyo and used what he had learned to self-produce a number of fine woodblock prints, etchings and dry points during the 1930s. These works, as contrasted with his designs as an illustrator, were widely admired and in 1935 Baldridge was awarded the annual Prairie Printmakers of Chicago prize. During the same period, many of his works were also exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum. Provenance: Alice Gunter of Carlsbad, New Mexico; acquired directly from the artist. During the entire span of her collecting, Ms. Gunter accumulated nearly 400 works by the artist.