As part of the city of Detroit’s recent bankruptcy filing, its emergency manager has called on Christie’s to appraise the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and many fear that the institution’s works may make their way to auction in an attempt to raise money for the cash-strapped city to pay off its creditors. The legality of such a sale remains uncertain, but in the meantime we and several other sites are observing A Day for Detroit, when we acquaint ourselves with some of the treasures from the DIA collection that could disappear into private collections, like Ellen Kendall Baker’s portrait of the artist as a young infant.

“The Young Artist” (1885) was acquired directly from Baker and is one of the best-known works by the relatively obscure native New Yorker. Trained in Paris under the English painter Harry Thompson — whom she would eventually marry — among others. Though widely exhibited during her lifetime, Baker — who died in 1913 at age 74 — remains relatively unknown.

In this work she shows a precocious baby swathed from head to outstretched toe in white working on a small chalk drawing while older sister looks on intensely. The oil painting is a playful twist on the genre of portraits of young artists, from Fragonard and Rembrandt to Norman Rockwell.