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Born in Baltimore, Francis Hopkinson Smith began his career as a mechanical engineer. In this capacity, he was responsible for the Race Lighthouse off New London, the Block Island Breakwater, and the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. Smith was also a prominent and highly successful author. He wrote twelve novels, including the semi-autobiographical, The Fortunes of Oliver Horn (1902). In his nonfiction books and numerous magazine articles, Smith addressed many topics, however, his main focus was foreign travel and experience. Well-worn Roads of Spain, Holland and Italy was published in 1887, and Gondola Days which describes the experience of a visitor in Venice, was first published in 1897. Throughout his life, Smith traveled extensively in Europe, Turkey, and Mexico. He recorded his experiences in his writings and in his art.
Smith turned to art as a profession in the early 1870s. Essentially self-taught, he first instructed himself in the watercolor medium. He became a member of the American Watercolor Society in 1871, and he continued to create watercolors throughout his life. In the late 1870s, Smith was a member of the Tile Club, where he got to know many of the prominent young artists of his day including William Merritt Chase, Winslow Homer, J. Alden Weir, John H. Twachtman, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Initially the group met with the purpose of decorating tiles, but it soon turned to other artistic endeavors. As the unofficial leader of the club, Smith (who was given the nickname of "the Owl") initiated many of the group's activities, and became renowned for his after-dinner stories. Smith proposed the trip taken by the Tilers to Long Island in the winter of 1878-1879, and participated in the club's journey in a chartered barge, the John C. Earle, up the Northern Canal to Lake Champlain in 1880. Smith co-authored two articles on the Tile Club (with William Mackay Laffan), and many of his drawings created on Tile Club trips were included in these as illustrations. Along with Edward Strahan (Earl Shinn), Smith also wrote A Book of the Tile Club, which was published in 1886. He later devoted a chapter of The Fortunes of Oliver Horn to a group closely resembling the Tile Club.
Although he was based in New York, Smith spent much of his career abroad. Working in watercolor, pastel, and oil he depicted the sites that most delighted the nineteenth-century tourist in a refined and realistic style. Venice was his favorite city. He wrote in Gondola Days:
I have contented myself . . . with the Venice that you see in the sunlight of a summer's day the Venice that bewilders with her glory when you land at her water gate; that delights with her color when you idle along the Riva; that intoxicates with her music as you lie in your gondola adrift on the bosom of some breathless lagoon the Venice of mould-stained palace, quaint café and arching bridge; of fragrant incense, cool, dim-lighted church, and noiseless priest; of strong-armed men and graceful women the Venice of light and life, of sea and sky and melody.
Rendered with thin washes and delicately wrought details, Smith's watercolors of Venice capture the picturesque charm of the city. Venice left a strong imprint on Smith, and for the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exhibition, he arranged the construction of boats that replicated Venetian gondolas and hired Venetian gondoliers to man them. After the turn-of-the-century, Smith began to work in an Impressionist style.
Smith was an avid promoter of his works and they were acquired by many important collectors including John Jacob Astor, Charles F. Havermeyer, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and William Thompson Walters. His works are included in many important private and public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Mead Art Gallery, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts; the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; the Brooklyn Museum; and the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.
LNP
*The essay herein is the property of Spanierman Gallery LLC and is copyrighted by Spanierman Gallery LLC and may not be reproduced in whole or in part, without written permission from Spanierman Gallery LLC nor shown or communicated to anyone without due credit being given to Spanierman Gallery LLC.
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