Late for School (aka First Day of School)

This lithograph was published by Associated American Artists around 1940 and depicts a child, arriving at a rural school while the teacher awaits him holding a willow switch - a child's nightmare.

Howard Baer (1906-1986) was born in a mining town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his art education at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. In 1929, he moved to New York City where he worked for ten years as Cartoonist and Illustrator for The New Yorker, Esquire and Colliers, turning to painting in 1941.

During World War II, Baer was an artist/correspondent and produced two series of paintings commissioned by Abbott Laboratories. The first depicted the work of the Waves at the Anacostia Naval Base, Maryland and the Waves Training Center, Norman, Oklahoma. The second assignment took him to the China-Burma-India theater where his paintings captured the work being performed there by the Arm Medical Department. He traveled and painted in Europe after the war.