Design and Art Australia Online

portrait and landscape painter, exhibited three landscapes with the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts at Sydney in 1847. William Moffitt also lent one of Smith’s genre subjects to the exhibition, Terriers Attacking a Hedgehog , 'a fair production, the drawing and action of the terriers not amiss’, according to the Sydney Morning Herald critic. All appear to have been European subjects. On 13 November 1847, however, Smith’s portrait of a Sydney resident, Joseph Coquelin, was published in Heads of the People as The Baker .

Smith must have arrived in Australia late in 1847. When reviewing the second Sydney art exhibition in 1849 the Herald stated that the artist 'had but latterly come among us’. He was then showing three paintings: two portraits and a landscape. The Herald considered the former superior to the latter and Portrait of a Lady was particularly admired: 'This painting is immeasurably beyond everything of the same nature in the exhibition. Its sobriety of tone, transparency of shadow, purity of colouring, and delicacy of touch, cannot be too strongly recommended to the notice of our colonial artists as a model on which to form themselves.’ The Thimble Rig , on the other hand, indicated that Smith was 'clearly out of his element in landscape, both as to pencilling and colour’. Undeterred, Smith also continued to paint landscapes.

Smith’s Crayon [Pastel] Portrait in Fancy Costume in the exhibition was also praised, and the following year he advertised his availability to take 'Portraits in Oil or Pastile Crayon, in the Fancy Ball Costume’, two days after the Mayor’s Ball of 22 August and in anticipation of J. Clarke’s Fancy Dress Ball advertised for 4 September 1850. A participant in James Grocott’s first art union, Smith was awarded the prize of £30 for Eugene Aram , the best 'historical or composition picture in oil’ – but there were no other contestants. When he entered First Love in Grocott’s second art union of June 1850, he encountered opposition from Joseph Backler and Joseph Dennis for the prize money in the oil narrative painting section and no prize seems to have been awarded. That year Smith became a member of the short-lived Australian Artists’ Society, founded in July as a mutual protection grou

In 1851 Smith moved his studio to King Street East, 'above Mr Rowe’s chemist shop’. He also exhibited several paintings at Piddington’s Bookshop 'to be disposed of by raffle’. The Sydney Morning Herald considered Old Waterloo or the Double Bay Hermit with Views of Double Bay one of the best:

it represents an old man who lives under a rock, in Double Bay, where he gets a living by making brooms; he is sitting in front of his dwelling-place, where there is a glimpse of a corner of the bay, which is nicely done. “Old Waterloo” as the old man is called, is an old soldier who fought through the whole of the Peninsular War and has just received his medal… we are told that the likeness of the old veteran is very striking.

In 1852 Smith was in Pitt Street, 'nearly opposite the School of Arts’, where he taught 'Landscape and Figure Painting in Oils, as well as Pastil Crayon’ (on Saturdays) and 'Drawing in all its branches… as taught by the Government Schools of Design in England’ (on Monday evenings).

By 1853 Smith had received several portrait commissions from prominent Sydney citizens, among them Mr Scott, George Allen MLC and the merchant David Jones. Bell’s Life in Sydney favourably compared his skill as a portraitist with that of Marshall Claxton and felt that the above portraits, in particular, 'started from the canvas in their respective life-like character’. The Herald agreed that he successfully captured 'the very expression of the countenance’. In 1853 he painted a pair of portraits of the medical practitioner Thomas Hogg and his wife, Martha, with their son, Samuel (ML). By January 1855 Smith was painting a portrait of Governor Sir Charles FitzRoy (ML). A portrait of Lieutenant Colonel George Johnston signed by Smith and dated 1853 (ML), however, was later claimed by the son of William Nicholas to be largely his father’s work.

At the 1854 Australian Museum Exhibition Smith showed an oil painting, Mount Abundance, Fitz Roy Downs, Maranoa District; with View of the Hut where Leichhardt and his Party were Last Seen , developed from a drawing by W. Gideon Lang . His other exhibits were a crayon drawing and four unspecified oil paintings, probably all portraits (one was a portrait of the Congregational missionary Rev. L.E. Threlkeld, another a self-portrait). In addition, he showed a 'wax medallion of Head of Christ’, the only known example of his modelling.

On 20 July 1855 a Herald reporter recommended a visit to Mr Smith’s studio 'in the late Exchange buildings’ in order to admire his excellent landscapes, 'somewhat in the style of [Richard] Wilson, the celebrated English landscape painter’. In one large classical landscape 'a strangely shaped gondola is seen romantically stealing its way towards the lovely wooded bank of a river, which reflects the varied tints of the rocks and trees by which it is overhung’. In another:

We at once recognized a splendid view of Woolloomooloo Bay, the foliage in which is beautifully painted. Much time has been spent by the Artist in making his sketches for this fine picture which is now fast progressing towards its completion. We understand an order has been made for it, but not to the full amount required to compensate Mr. Smith for the time devoted to so exquisite a subject. The large castellated building at Darlinghurst ['The Pepperpot’ at Potts Point], forms a prominent object in the midst of the most lovely foliage; and the fine clouded sky and azure water complete a scene of rare beauty.

(An unsigned watercolour featuring The Pepperpot c.1855, sold at Sotheby’s in 1990, may be a preparatory sketch.) The reviewer waxed equally lyrical over 'a fine Illawarra scene’: a small farm, a creek, a man and woman on horseback with a dog running in front of them and a cottage and outhouses on a hill behind, as well as another 'highly finished’ painting of a fire in a dead tree.

A watercolour view of Woolloomooloo by Smith appeared in a general exhibition of paintings at Ross’s Australian Gallery in September 1855 together with a 'very pretty imaginary scene’ he had painted. That year he was living at 167 Pitt Street, where he presumably remained until 1858. Then he moved to a house in Cleveland Street, Redfern where he began conducting 'drawing classes for young people’ in January 1860. He was last noted in a Sydney directory as living at 108 Abercrombie Street in 1864. His Dogs at Tarmons, N.S.W. is dated 1865 (photograph ML). After this, Smith disappears from view.

Writers:

Bruce, Candice

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011