Thomas Stuart Smith | |
---|---|
![]() 1874 portrait by Alfred Wilson Cox | |
Born | 1815 |
Died | 1869 |
Nationality | British |
Known for | philanthropy |
Thomas Stuart Smith (1815–1869) was a Scottish painter and philanthropist known for creating what is now called the Stirling Smith Museum and Art Gallery, located in Stirling, Scotland.
Thomas Stuart Smith was born in 1815 as the secret illegitimate nephew of Alexander Smith, who had the estate at Glassingall, Dunblane, Scotland. Alexander's brother, the father, sent Thomas to a school in France whilst he conducted his business in Canada and the East Indies. In 1831 no fees were paid and Thomas thought his father must have died. He returned to England, when he and his uncle learned of each other for the first time. They did not meet, but Alexander advanced sums to him from time to time. [1]
Smith started working as a tutor. He later became interested in painting from an Italian master painter whom he met whilst serving as a traveling tutor to a British family. His uncle Alexander supplied funding so that he could travel and paint in Italy starting in 1840.
By the end of that decade, Smith was having his work accepted by both the Salon des Beaux Arts in Paris and the Royal Academy in London. His first painting at the Royal Academy was bought by Professor Owen, an acquaintance of Edwin Landseer, who was said to have admired it repeatedly. [1]
The Salon, or rarely Paris Salon, beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art event in the Western world. At the 1761 Salon, thirty-three painters, nine sculptors, and eleven engravers contributed. From 1881 onward, it has been managed by the Société des Artistes Français.
Sir Edwin Henry Landseer was an English painter and sculptor, well known for his paintings of animals – particularly horses, dogs, and stags. However, his best known works are the lion sculptures in Trafalgar Square.
In 1849 Alexander Smith died intestate. Thomas took possession of the family's estate in 1857 after vying at great expense with eighteen other aspirants. During the eight years that he had waited in hope of his inheritance, he taught art at the Nottingham School of Design. James Orrock, the collecter and watercoulourist, was one of his pupils; he commented on how Smith could paint anything. Smith was known to the Barbizon School of realistic painting, including the animal painters Constant Troyon and John Phillip RA. [1]
Founded in 1843, the School of Art & Design at Nottingham Trent University is one of the oldest in the United Kingdom.
James Orrock R.I., R.O.I., was a prominent Scottish collector of art and oriental ceramics, illustrator and landscape watercolourist. The scale of his involvement with the art trade and with top collectors such as John Ruskin is highlighted in the large two volume set of books published about him by Byron Webber: published in London, Chatto and Windus 1903: James Orrock R.I., Painter, Connoisseur, Collector. Rather than being a forger as some modern scholars like to believe Orrock was a dedicated enthusiast of contemporary British art and emulated some of those artists in his own work. He illustrated three books in the style of Turner: Mary Queen-of-Scots, 1906; Old England : her story mirrored in her scenes, 1908; and, In the Border country, 1906.
Constant Troyon was a French painter of the Barbizon school. In the early part of his career he painted mostly landscapes. It was only comparatively late in life that Troyon found his métier as a painter of animals, and achieved international recognition.
Having gained the estate, he kept it just six years. He sold it and used the funds to move to London. His legal costs had been high. His new fortune enabled him to create an art collection at a studio in Fitzroy Square that included his own work. He decided to create an Institute in Stirling to house his new collection. He drew up plans for a library, museum, and a reading room and he offered £5,000 to the council if they could donate a site within two years. He signed the trust into existence in November 1869 with himself, James Barty, the Provost of Stirling and A.W.Cox, a fellow artist, as trustees. He did not see his plans fulfilled as he died the next month in Avignon. [1]
Fitzroy Square is one of the Georgian squares in London and is the only one found in the central London area known as Fitzrovia.
Avignon is a commune in south-eastern France in the department of Vaucluse on the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 90,194 inhabitants of the city, about 12,000 live in the ancient town centre enclosed by its medieval ramparts.
Smith is known primarily for founding the Smith Institute, which is now called the Stirling Smith Museum and Art Gallery. Smith also has hundreds of paintings in public ownership. [2]
Two of Smith's works that are still thought to be important are portraits he painted of black men. Unlike other depictions at the time, in which black people were included as servants, Smith's portraits Fellah of Kinneh and Pipe of Freedom show his subjects as independent and free; they were painted to celebrate the abolition of slavery in America in 1865 following the American Civil War. [3] He also did a smaller painting called The Cuban Cigarette, which has a similar presence. [1] The Pipe of Freedom shows a man lighting a pipe; behind him a slave sale notice has been partially covered by an abolition notice. [3]
Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists. Before colonization there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial architecture and the accompanying styles in other media were quickly in place. Early colonial art on the East Coast initially relied on artists from Europe, with John White the earliest example. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists primarily painted portraits, and some landscapes in a style based mainly on English painting. Furniture-makers imitating English styles and similar craftsmen were also established in the major cities, but in the English colonies, locally made pottery remained resolutely utilitarian until the 19th century, with fancy products imported.
Sir Henry Raeburn was a British portrait painter and Scotland's first significant portrait painter since the Union to remain based in Scotland. He served as Portrait Painter to King George IV in Scotland.
Allan Ramsay was a prominent Scottish portrait-painter.
Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island Colony who is widely considered one of America's foremost portraitists. His best known work is the unfinished portrait of George Washington, begun in 1796, that is sometimes referred to as the Athenaeum Portrait. Stuart retained the portrait and used it to paint scores of copies that were commissioned by patrons in America and abroad. The image of George Washington featured in the painting has appeared on the United States one-dollar bill for more than a century and on various postage stamps of the 19th century and early 20th century.
Vasily Andreevich Tropinin was a Russian Romantic painter. Much of his life was spent as a serf; he didn't attain his freedom until he was more than forty years old. Three of his more important works are a portrait of Alexander Pushkin and paintings called The Lace Maker and The Gold-Embroideress.
Thomas Sully was an American portrait painter. Born in Great Britain, he lived most of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He painted in the style of Thomas Lawrence. His subjects included national political leaders, such as presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, and General Marquis de Lafayette, and many leading musicians and composers.
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is an art museum on Queen Street, Edinburgh. The gallery holds the national collections of portraits, all of which are of, but not necessarily by, Scots. It also holds the Scottish National Photography Collection.
Thomas Hovenden, was an Irish artist and teacher. He painted realistic quiet family scenes, narrative subjects and often depicted African Americans.
George Peter Alexander Healy was an American portrait painter. He was one of the most prolific and popular painters of his day, and his sitters included many of the eminent personages of his time.
Edwin Longsden Long was a British genre, history, biblical and portrait painter.
Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum is an institution based in Stirling, Central Scotland, dedicated to the promotion of cultural and historical heritage and the arts, from a local scale to nationally and beyond. It is also known locally by its original name of "The Smith Institute". Its current Director since 1994 is Dr Elspeth King.
George Watson RSA was a Scottish portrait painter and the first president of the Royal Scottish Academy.
Humphrey Ocean is a contemporary British painter and Royal Academy Professor of Perspective.
Jacob Eichholtz (1776–1842) was an early American painter, known primarily for his portraits in the Romantic Victorian tradition. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in a family of prosperous Pennsylvania Germans, he spent most of his professional life in Philadelphia. A coppersmith by trade, he turned to painting and achieved both recognition and success despite being mainly self-taught as an artist. He is known to have painted over 800 portraits over the course of 35 years. Hundreds of his works are housed in art museums, historical societies, and private collections throughout the United States.
Andrew Stuart was a Scottish lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1774 and 1801.
James Campbell Noble was a Scottish painter. He signed his paintings, mostly in the left hand bottom corner, as J.C. Noble or as J.Campbell Noble.
Art in early modern Scotland includes all forms of artistic production within the modern borders of Scotland, between the adoption of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century to the beginnings of the Enlightenment in the mid-eighteenth century.
Scottish art in the eighteenth century is the body of visual art made in Scotland, by Scots, or about Scottish subjects, in the eighteenth century. This period saw development of professionalisation, with art academies were established in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Art was increasingly influenced by Neoclassicism, the Enlightenment and towards the end of the century by Romanticism, with Italy becoming a major centre of Scottish art.
Jane Nasmyth was a Scottish landscape painter of the Nasmyth School in Edinburgh. She was the daughter and student of the portrait and landscape painter Alexander Nasmyth.