Exhibiting publicly with the Birmingham Society of Artists from 1827 onwards, he painted landscapes throughout Warwickshire, the Midlands and the Welsh border regions and occasionally producing depictions of the Lake District, Scotland and Ireland.

More often than not Baker's landscapes include cattle, although sheep and human figures are also fairly common in his works.

After his premature death in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, at the age of 55 (amid suggestions of murder that led to the suicide of his housekeeper, Hannah Hewitt), Baker's body was returned to his birthplace and buried in close proximity to the famous Midlands landscape artist David Cox at St. Peter's Church in Harborne, Birmingham.

Edmund Smith-Baker ran a studio on Bristol Street in Birmingham together with his younger brother Thomas William, where – alongside the production of carte de visite photographs – he is believed to have completed new and previously unfinished Baker landscapes.

As a last point of interest with regard to Thomas Baker 'of Leamington', Charles Lines has suggested that, prior to his relationship with Elizabeth Alice Smith, the artist had previously been married at either Leamington All-Saints or Lillington Church and produced two legitimate sons.