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ART “4” “2”-DAY 26 July

DEATHS: 1702 VAN DER VINNE — 1919 POYNTER

BIRTHS: 1893 GROSZ — 1870 ZULOAGA

^ Born on 26 July 1893: George Grosz, Berliner US Expressionist painter, draftsman, and illustrator, who died on 06 July 1959.
— Georg Grosz added an "e" to his first name to make it seem that he was from the UK or the US, and thus express his loathing for German nationalism. In the story of modern art, Grosz is a brilliant anomaly: a satirist and caricaturist whose brutal humor was instantly recognised by the avant-garde as avant-garde, yet was widely accessible. At the end of the first world war Grosz was one of the leaders of Berlin Dada. Photomontage was the quintessential visual art of Dada, embodying its cult of chaos perfectly through cutting up and grotesquely remounting images. Grosz mixed it with stupendously powerful drawing. When the German communist party was founded in 1919 he joined, along with John Heartfield. His art of the 1920s is a gross carnival of horrors, charting with beery cigar-chomping cynicism the rise of German militarism in a society of maimed zombies.
— He is particularly valued for his caustic caricatures, in which he used the reed pen with notable success. Although his paintings are not quite as significant as his graphic art, a number of them are, nonetheless, major works. Born in Berlin, he grew up in the provincial town of Stolp, Pomerania (now Slupsk, Poland), where he attended the Oberrealschule, until he was expelled for disobedience. From 1909 to 1911 he attended the Akademie der Künste in Dresden, where he met Kurt Günther, Bernhard Kretschmar [1889–1972] and Franz Lenk [1898–]. Under his teacher Richard Müller [1874–1954], Grosz painted and drew from plaster casts. At this time he was unaware of such avant-garde movements as Die Brücke, also active in Dresden.
      In 1912 he studied under Emil Orlik at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin. A year later he moved to the Académie Colarossi in Paris, where he learnt a free drawing style that swiftly reached the essence of a motif. He became prominent in the Berlin Dada group and, in the 1920's, a leader of Neue Sachlichkeit movement. He had is first US show in 1931. He was invited to the US in 1932 and settled there in 1933, becoming a US citizen in 1938. He returned to Berlin in 1959 and died there.
— The students of Grosz included Hans Bellmer, Paul Rand, Tony Smith.

— LINKS
— Selbstbildnis mit Hut (1928; 600x435pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1015pix)
— Selbstbildnis als Warner (im blauen Kittel) (1927; 600x480pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1120pix)
— Lower Manhattan — untitled (“Unhuman”) — High Dunes (1940) — Berlin Street Scene (1930) — You Holy Assembly of Freaks — Lovesick Man — In Honor of Professor Freud — Passerby — Dawn — Twilight — The Angel of Peace (lithograph 31x25cm)
— Explosion (1917; 600x864pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2016pix)
— Gefährliche Straße (1917; 600x840pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1960pix)
— The Engineer Heartfield (1920) _ Helmut Herzfelde [19 Jun 1891 – 26 Apr 1968] changed his name to John Heartfield for the same reason Grosz became George. While for Grosz the cutting and pasting of images in Dadaist photomontage was one weapon in an arsenal of graphic effects, for Heartfield it was a philosophy. The communist Heartfield turned photomontage into a desperate political art. In the 1920s and 1930s — even after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, when Heartfield continued from Prague — he worked for the Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ) workers' illustrated paper. His visual assaults on the rising National Socialist Party spit out a terrible truth, making implausible the claims of others not to have seen what was happening: "Hurrah, the butter is all gone" (1935) has a German family eating metal.
      Grosz thinks it's great that Heartfield is clenched and grimacing like an evil thug, his heart a piece of photocollaged machinery, his head shaven and his fists ready for a brawl. Dada was at war — with art, bourgeois culture and expressionism (which placed the subjectivity of the artist first). In this portrait, Grosz celebrates expressionism's opposite: heartless art. Heartfield/ Herzfeld's name itself raises the question of feeling. Anger is the only emotion this picture permits itself. It is in love with anger because anger is energy. Heartfield is a bomb of pure energy. This is the modern artist as streetfighting man.
      Grosz translates the art of Hogarth from 18th-century London to modern Berlin, just as Brecht updated John Gay in The Threepenny Opera.
— 19 prints at FAMSF

^ Died on 26 July 1702: Vincent Laurenszoon van der Vinne I, Haarlem Flemish Mennonite painter and draftsman, best known for his travel diaries and sketches, born on 11 October 1629.
— He had three artist sons: Jan Vincentszoon van der Vinne [03 Feb 1663 – 01 Mar 1721], Izaak Vincentszoon van der Vinne [1665–1740], and Laurens Vincentszoon van der Vinne [1658–1729] who may be the author of some of the drawings attributed to his father. Three of Laurens’s children worked as painters and engravers: Vincent Laurenszoon van der Vinne (1686–1742), Jacob Laurenszoon van der Vinne (1688–1737) and Jan Laurenszoon van der Vinne (1699–1753). In the next generation Jacob’s son Laurens Jacobszoon van der Vinne (1712–42) became a flower painter, and two of Jan’s children, Jan Janszoon van der Vinne (1734–1805) and Vincent Janszoon van der Vinne (1736–1811), seem to have been the last artists active in the family. — Vincent Laurenszoon van der Vinne was trained at a weaving mill. Then, when he was 18, he spent nine months as the student of Frans Hals (who later painted his portrait in 1660), and in 1649 he joined the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke. From 1652 to 1655 van der Vinne traveled through Germany, Switzerland, and France, accompanied some of the time by Guillam Dubois [1610–1680], Dirck Helmbreker, and Cornelis Bega. During the trip van der Vinne kept an illustrated diary and on his return worked this up in a second volume, copying his drawings and adding topographical prints by Matthäus Merian the elder and Jean Boisseau. He also filled a sketchbook with Rhineland landscapes. The year after he returned from this trip he married Anneke Jansdr de Gaver [–1668], and six months after her death he married Catalijntje Boekaert. Besides the drawings from his 1652–1655 travels, he produced a number of townscapes in pen and ink with gray wash, some on a journey through the Netherlands in 1680. He also made drawings in black and red chalk depicting the city gates of Haarlem and ruins found in the surrounding countryside. He received commissions for ceiling paintings, signboards, landscapes, portraits and other works, but his known painted work is confined to a few vanitas still-lifes, such as Vanitas Still-life with a Royal Cromn and a Print of Charles I of England, beheaded in 1649 (>1649, 95x69cm), leçon de vanité, allusive aux fragiles occupations humaines (du berger au savant, du roi au musicien, etc...). On lit en haut «Denckt op t'ent» (pense à la fin) et, en bas, sous le portrait du roi: «t'kan verkeren» (cela peut changer). Contre-note optimiste, l'espérance signifiée par la gourde du pèlerin, lequel chemine vers Dieu.

— Memento Mori (1656; 450x423pix, 36kb) _ Exquisite vanitas still lifes like this were widely popular in seventeenth-century Europe. They were meant to exhort the viewer to prepare for death. Vanitas still lifes are based on a biblical passage from Ecclesiastes, "Vanity of vanities, ... all is vanity," that urges the reader to remember that saving one's soul is more important than wordly gains. All objects in this painting have symbolic meaning intended to remind the viewer that wealth, power and knowledge acquired in this world are unimportant in the face of inevitable death. The watch and hourglass give notice of the passage of time. The plumed helmet, sword and gun refer to soldierly activities; the globe, maps and the money bags to worldly knowledge and material possessions. Books indicate scholarly pursuits, but warn as well against conceited pride that comes with learning. The overturned goblet cautions against overindulgence, but also symbolizes the Sense of Taste. The musical instruments refer to the Sense of Hearing, to Music — one of the Seven Liberal Arts — and, in case of the lute and flute, to carnal love. Since they wither and die, the cut flowers in a vase allude to the transience of life, as does the skull, a particularly stark reminder of death. But the ivy crowning the skull offers hope because it is a symbol for immortality. Apart from its allegorical meaning, the painting is a pleasure for the eye in its masterful representation of different materials, its color, and the organization of these diverse elements.
— Vanitas with a Royal Crown and the portrait of Charles I King of England Decapitated in 1649 (95x69cm; 797x573pix, 54kb) _ Vincent van de Vinne is best known for his still-lifes. Beside Pieter van Roestraten, a genre and still-life painter (and the son-in-law of Frans Hals) Vinne is the only documented student of Hals, though not a trace of their contact with him is evident in their works. Leçon de vanité, allusive aux fragiles occupations humaines (du berger au savant, du roi au musicien, etc...). On lit en haut «Denckt op t'ent» (pense à la fin) et, en bas, sous le portrait du roi : «t'kan verkeren» (cela peut changer). Contre-note optimiste, l'espérance signifiée par la gourde du pèlerin, lequel chemine vers Dieu.

^ Born on 26 July (June?) 1870: Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta, Basque artist who died on 31 October 1945.
— Zuloaga would become by 1921 the head of a definite school of Basque and Castilian painters, whose work would be marked by a realistic and decorative treatment of contemporary Spanish life, consciously based on Velazquez, El Greco and Goya. His art would show increasing emphasis on silhouette, simplification of form and use of broad masses of somber color relieved by splashes of more vivid tints.
— Born at Eibar in the Basque Pyrenées, son of a well-known goldsmith and metal worker, and of a long line of craftsmen. At fifteen visited the Prado and copied El Greco. Spent six months in Rome in 1889, then lived mainly in Paris for several years on friendly terms with Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Rodin, Mallarm-23 and the Spanish painter Rusifiol. Travel in 1892 in Andalusia aroused his passion for Spanish gypsies, bullfighters and peasants, who became the subjects for many of his later pictures; influenced by the tradition of Velazquez and Goya. Achieved success as a painter more rapidly abroad than in Spain. Lived between Spain (Seville, Segovia, Madrid) and Paris, later in the Basque fishing port of Zumaya. Awarded the Grand Prix at the 1912 Rome International Exhibition and the main painting prize at the 1938 Venice Biennale; his later work included a number of society portraits. Died in Madrid.
— He studied in Paris in 1891, coming under the influence of Impressionism and of the group of Catalan painters around Santiago Rusiñol. His visit to Andalusia in 1892 provided the key to his later work, leading him to replace the grey tonalities of his Paris paintings with more brightly colored images of Spanish folkloric subjects and of male or female figures in regional dress, for example Merceditas (1913). Zuloaga turned to Castilian subjects in works such as Segoviano and Toreros de Pueblo (both 1906) after the defeat suffered by Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898; like the group of writers known as the ‘Generation of ’98’, with whom he was associated and who were among his most articulate supporters, he sought to encourage the regeneration of his country’s culture but with a critical spirit.
— José de Creeft was a student of Zuloaga.

— Ignacio Zuloaga, herriak emandako pertsonaia ezagunena. Pintore moduan, zeharo espainola: toreroak eta señoritak marrazten nabarmendu zen. Bere pintura tonu ilunegatik eta bere lanean eratutako errealismo handiagatik bereizten da.

— Ignacio Zuloaga Zabaleta, pintor vasco quien nació en Eibar, Guipúzcoa, el 26 de junio 1870 y falleció en Madrid. En 1896 se traslada a Madrid y copió cuadros en el Museo del Prado. En 1889 viajó a Roma y un año más tarde a París, donde acudió a la Academia "La Palette", donde recibió clases de Puvis de Chavannes [14 Dec 1824 - 24 Oct 1898], Gervaux, y Carrière. Conoció a Degas [19 Jul 1834 - 26 Sep 1917], Gauguin [07 Jun 1848 - 08 May 1903] y Toulouse-Lautrec [24 Nov 1864 - 09 Sep 1901], y se sintió muy atraído por el impresionismo.
      A partir de ese momento, alternó su residencia entre París y España con viajes a otros países. En 1895 se instaló en Sevilla, donde desarrolló un gran interés por los temas taurinos y andaluces. En 1898 se trasladó a Segovia y allí da paso a un estilo de gran fuerza expresiva, en el que predomina el tema de paisaje y los hombres de Castilla, con los que se sentirá muy identificado..
      Consolidado su prestigio internacional, le encargaron decorados para las Operas de Berlín y Bruselas. En 1914 se instaló en Zumaya, pero siguió viajando a menudo. En la última etapa de su vida trabajó en su estudio de Madrid y recibió numerosos encargos de retratos, aunque sin abandonar el bodegón y el paisaje como su obra más personal.
      Rechazó el impresionismo y buscó una pintura con fuerza, que se caracteriza por un dibujo enérgico, una constructividad volumétrica en la línea de Cézanne, una pastosidad que deriva de Van Gogh [30 Mar 1853 - 29 Jul 1890] y unas curvas decorativas que proceden del modernismo y de Gauguin. Como Degas, hace las composiciones con el motivo principal descentrado. Su visión de España le relaciona con la generación del 98: paisajes yermos y ciudades decadentes, que evocan un pasado glorioso.
— Photo of Zuloaga

— LINKS
— Dos Autoretratos
— A young woman (60x46cm) — A Lady With A Fan (89x71cm)
— An Elegant Lady Fanning Herself (95x69cm)
— Lola Con Vestido De Flores Blancas (78x100cm)
— Torerillos de pueblo (1906; 792x600pix, 41kb)
— Crucifixión (621x739pix, 51kb) — El Violinista Larrapidi (821x527pix, 28kb)
— Desnudo (1915; 517x739pix, 22kb) — [Mucho Puerco?] (638x466pix, 26kb)
— El Señor Beistegui (1093x929pix, 44kb)
— Cuatro bebedores o Amarretako (1905)

^ Died on 26 July 1919: Sir Edward John James Poynter, English Classicist painter born on 20 March 1836, brother-in-law of Edward Burne-Jones and Georgina Macdonald. [Did he give them a few pointers by giving them a few Poynters?]
— For much of his artistic life, Sir Edward Poynter, the neo-classical painter, lived under the shadow of Lord Leighton, and as a result his work was unjustly neglected. Furthermore, his talents never quite matched those of Leighton and Alma-Tadema, even though at times he could be a superb artist, as with his The Cave of the Storm Nymphs, which is one of his finest academic paintings. It was bought in 1891 for £203'500, one of the most expensive Victorian pictures ever sold at that time [the same-title painting listed below as of 1903 must be a different one, or else one of the dates is wrong].
      Unlike Leighton, whose flamboyant lifestyle matched his outgoing personality, Poynter was a reserved, cantankerous man who was unable to change with the times, with the result that his work was dismissed as prententious and uninteresting. When Leighton died, Poynter took over the role of President of the Royal Academy, where he remained for over twenty-two years, until many people began to wonder if he would ever retire. He resigned finally when he was over 80, but only because he was almost blind.
      Edward Poynter was born in Paris, the son of an architect, and after being educated at Westminster and Ipswich Grammar School, he went to Rome, where he met Leighton. Having decided to take up art as a career, as a direct result of meeting Leighton, he studied in Paris under Charles Gleyre [1808-1874], who had been a penniless artist before he opened an atelier, when he rapidly became a famous teacher.
      In 1859 Poynter returned to London, and for the next few years struggled to make a living from his painting with indifferent results. He desperately needed the RA to take one of his pictures in order to establish his name. Eventually Faithful Until Death was accepted by the RA in 1865. This picture, which shows a Roman soldier doggedly remaining at his post during the destruction of Pompeii, was a great success, and still remains Poynter's most famous work. This was followed by The Catapult and Atlanta's Race. [nothing to do with African-Americans in Georgia]. Among his famous paintings are The Fortune Teller (1877) and The Meeting between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
      Although by 1894 his powers were beginning to decline, he was still made the Director of the National Gallery and an RA in 1896. By 1900, however, his paintings began to be repetitious and uninteresting. When the end finally came there were some deeply felt sighs of relief from a large number of people who felt that he had already long overstayed his welcome.
— Early in his career Poynter studied in Rome, where he met Frederic Leighton, his greatest single artistic influence. He then moved to Paris in 1855. On returning to London, he became involved on book illustration. In 1865 he produced his first really successful picture, Faithful Unto Death, a Roman sentry staying at his post in Pompeii as Vesuvius overwhelmed the city. This dramatic painting was probably never bettered by Poynter throughout his whole long career. Poynter became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1869, at an unusually early age. Much of the rest of his life was devoted to the Academy, he was hardworking, conscientious, and a competent administrator.
      Poynter married Agnes MacDonald, the sister of Burne-Jones wife Georgiana. Burne-Jones disliked Poynter, who was an unsympathetic, brusque character. When Leighton died in 1896, he was succeeded as President of the Royal Academy by Millais, who was suffering from cancer of the throat. On the death of Millais a few months later, Poynter succeeded him, narrowly defeating Briton Riviere in the vote. He was PRA for the next two decades.
      From the turn of the century Poynter's paintings declined both in numbers and quality, his main priority being the running of the Academy. He lived to see the death of classicism, & the total eclipse of his own artistic standards, & those of his contemporaries. He adopted the approach of ignoring new developments of which he did not approve. Unhappily Poynter outstayed his welcome. One of the last duties of the eighty one year old PRA, was to attend the funeral of J. W. Waterhouse. There was, though, something splendid about the way he remained consistent to the last, resisting what he saw as the corruption, and denigration of all that was beautiful in art. He may even have been right.
— Obituary in The Times

— LINKS
— The Cave of the Storm Nymphs (1903, 145x109cm) — Israel in Egypt (1867)
— The Catapult (1868, 155x184cm) — Cressida (1888, 123x133cm) — Lesbia and her Sparrow
— A Roman boat race (1889; 700x494pix, 103kb) — Psyche in the temple of love (1882)
— At low tide (1913) — A visit to Aesculapius (1883, 151x229cm) — Reading (1871)
— On the Terrace — The fortune Teller (1877, 62x75cm) — The vision of Endymion
— On the Temple Steps (1889; 700x468pix, 83kb) — Adoration to Ra (1867; 698x405pix, 88kb) — “Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna” left detail (849x1000pix, 431kb) _ various Madonnas by Cimabue [1240-1302] _ Leighton [1830-1896] painted Cimabue's celebrated Madonna is carried in procession through the streets of Florence (1856), but I can find no reproduction of it on the Internet.
— A Corner of the Villa _ This painting provides us with a sense of space as we observe a private moment shared in an atrium among two women and a child. The artist's willingness to attempt a scene so full of different marbles, mosaics and stone reliefs is commendable and speaks well of his technical prowess. Not only was Poynter an accomplished painter, but as president of the Royal Academy for 23 year (1896-1919), he was responsible for the education of hundreds of other artists.

Died on a 26 July:

1920 Friedrich August von Kaulbach, German portrait and genre painter, born on 02 Jun 1850. He was the son of Friedrich Kaulbach [08 July 1822 – 17 Sep 1903], who was a first cousin and a student of Wilhelm von Kaulbach [15 Oct 1804 – 07 Apr 1874], who was the father of Hermann Kaulbach [26 July 1846 – 09 December 1909]

^ 1802 Rose Adélaïde Ducreux, French Neoclassical painter, born in 1761. — Relative? of Joseph Ducreux [1735-1802]? — Self-portrait with a Harp (193x129cm) _ Inscribed: (on book) Opera; (on music) Romance / par Benoit pollet / [?] tendre amour . . . marit je rend l[es] / ar—me je rend les ar—me / il est pour moi si plein de / charme que j`en atta . . . (verses from an unidentified song by Jean Joseph Benoît Pollet [1753–1818])

^ 1728 (26 Jan?) Paolo di Matteis, Italian painter and silversmith born on 09 February 1662. He studied under Francesco di Maria. Di Matteis was important to the history of painting in Naples in the transitional period between the 17th and 18th centuries. His elegant art encouraged the movement away from Baroque drama towards a more tender, rocaille style in harmony with the earliest manifestations in Naples of the Arcadian school of poetry and of the Enlightenment. He painted frescoes, altarpieces and allegorical and mythological pictures. — The students of di Matteis included Sarnelli, Inácio de Oliveira Bernardes, Francesco Peresi. — LINKS

^ 1671 Cornelis de Baellieur I, Flemish painter born on 05 February 1607. He was apprenticed to Anton Lisaert in 1617. Nine years later he became a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke, of which he was dean in 1644–1645. His son, of the same name, also became a painter, but there is nothing left of his work. Cornelis de Baellieur the elder was a painter of small figures and was closely associated with Frans Francken the younger; he may even have worked in his studio. The only known signed and dated work by de Baellieur is the Interior of a Collector’s Cabinet (1637). This picture, which depicts a sumptuously decorated interior with visitors admiring the oil paintings and objets d’art, confirms the skill of this little-known artist. The influence of Francken is evident in de Baellieur’s frequently signed biblical paintings, for example Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, the Idolatry of Solomon, and The Adoration by the Magi. Nevertheless, de Baellieur’s figures are striking for their meticulous quality. To the modern viewer, his compositions appear somewhat garish, since in his biblical paintings he favored juxtapositions of whitish-yellow, violet and pink tones. His style is easily recognizable: stereotypical figures with doll-like faces, slightly protruding eyes and steeply sloping shoulders. These characteristics do not appear in the Cabinet of Rubens formerly attributed to him (it is now thought to be by Willem van Herp).

Born on a 26 July:

1895 Jankel Adler, Polish painter who died on 25 April 1949. He underwent an apprenticeship in engraving in 1912 and in 1913 moved to Barmen (now Wuppertal) in Germany, where he studied under Gustav Wiethüchter at the Kunstgewerbeschule during World War I. In 1918 he came into contact with Das Junge Rheinland, a group of artists based in Düsseldorf. In the same year he visited Poland, where he was one of the founders of the Ing Idisz (Young Yiddish) group, an association of painters and writers in Lódz dedicated to the expression of their Jewish identity. The few surviving works produced by Adler during this period, all in an Expressionist style, with the human figure subjected to elongated and distorted proportions, reveal his own response to these concerns. The Rabbi’s Last Hour (1919), in which the influence of El Greco has been discerned, is a good example. His inventory of images included motifs from Jewish folk art and Hebrew calligraphy.

1846 Hermann Kaulbach, German history and genre painter who died on 09 December 1909. Son of Wilhelm von Kaulbach [15 Oct 1804 – 07 Apr 1874], who was a first cousin and a teacher of Friedrich Kaulbach [08 July 1822 – 17 Sep 1903], who was the father of Friedrich August von Kaulbach [02 Jun 1850 – 26 Jul 1920].

^ 1800 Octave Nicolas François Tassaert, French painter and printmaker, who died on 24 April 1874. — Son of French engraver Jean-Joseph-François Tassaert [1765-1835], who was the brother of pastellist / engraver Henriette-Félicité Tassaert [05 Apr 1766 – 06 Aug 1818] and the son of Flemish sculptor Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert [19 Aug 1727 – 21 Jan 1788] and miniaturist Marie-Edmée Moreau Tassaert. — Related? to British painter Philippe Joseph Tassaert [1732-1803]? — As a child Octave Tassaert worked with his brother Paul Tassaert [–1855], producing engravings, but he later turned to painting and from 1817 to 1825 studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, first under Alexis-François Girard [1787–1870] and then Guillaume Lethière. In 1823 and 1824 he tried unsuccessfully to win the Prix de Rome, an early failure that greatly disheartened him. For much of his career, until 1849, he continued to work in the graphic arts, as well as painting, producing lithographs and drawings on various subjects: historical scenes from the First Empire, portraits, and mythological and genre scenes. He also produced illustrations for the Romantic novels of Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas père and François-René Chateaubriand. Though he achieved moderate success at the Salon, it was the graphic work that provided his small income during this period. His impoverished lifestyle is reflected in the gloomy painting Corner of the Artist’s Studio (1845), which depicts a shabbily dressed young artist peeling potatoes to make a modest meal.

^ 1749 John “Warwick” Smith, English painter who died on 22 March 1831. The son of a gardener to the Gilpin family, he studied under the animal painter Sawrey Gilpin. During a trip to Derbyshire with Gilpin he met George Greville, 2nd Earl of Warwick, who gave him financial support to go to Italy between 1776 and 1781. Smith spent 1778–1779 in Naples and was otherwise based in Rome, where he explored the Campagna and made sketches with William Pars and Francis Towne. The strong greens and purples and crisp pen outlines of some of Smith’s watercolors are strongly influenced by Towne’s style. Smith and Towne traveled together across the Alps on their way back to England in 1781, after which Smith settled in Warwick. He contributed six views to Samuel Middiman’s Select Views in Great Britain (1784–1785) and between 1784 and 1806 toured Wales 13 times in search of Picturesque and Sublime scenery. He also visited the Lake District between 1789 and 1792, which resulted in the publication of Twenty Views of the Lake District (1791–1795); he appears to have been in Devon and Worcestershire as well. Aquatints after Smith were used to illustrate William Sotheby’s Tour through Parts of Wales (1794), and engravings after his own work were used for Smith’s series of Select Views in Italy (1792–1799). By 1797 Smith had settled in London.
In 1799 J. M. W. Turner criticized Smith's ‘mechanically systematic' watercolors, but Smith's use of strong local colors applied without gray underpainting and his abandonment of pen-and-ink outlines gives a forceful and painterly quality to his watercolors (e.g. the Villa of Maecenas, Tivoli). His Welsh views often include figures involved in agricultural or commercial activities (e.g. quarrying), and he very effectively brought out the potential drama to be found in landscapes of cliffs and waterfalls, using them to dwarf his figures in a manner that places him among the early Romantic watercolor artists. In 1805 he became an Associate of the Society of Painters in Water-colors and a Member the following year. He exhibited with the Society between 1807 and 1823, mainly showing views of Swiss and Italian scenery, and was its Secretary in 1813 and President in 1814, 1817 and 1818.
— Monte Cassino (14x22cm, 637x979pix, 40kb) — 37 images at the Tate

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