RUSSELL SMITH PAINTINGS FOR SALE & BIOGRAPHY

RUSSELL SMITH

American, 1812–1896

BIOGRAPHY
Russell Smith is recognized as one of Philadelphia’s most important landscape and portrait painters of the mid-nineteenth century. He enjoyed a highly successful career as a scenic painter, landscape artist, panoramist and scientific draughtsman. He is particularly celebrated for his panoramas that were exhibited in Baltimore, Boston and Washington, D.C.

Although influenced by the artists associated with the Hudson River School, Smith’s work displays a fundamental difference from painters such as Church, Cropsey or Bierstadt. His paintings are intimate and more personal views of his favorite places, whereas the leaders of the Hudson River School produced large panoramas highly charged with spiritual metaphor. Smith wanted the viewer to enjoy his vision, not be awed and intimidated.

Smith’s parents immigrated to western Pennsylvania from Glasgow, Scotland in 1819, eventually settling in Pittsburgh in 1824. Growing up, Smith taught himself to paint commercial signs for money and life-size portraits of famous people for amusement. in 1827 or 1828, Russell Smith began his artistic studies with James Reid Lambdin, who was arguably the most important portraitist in Pittsburgh. Lambdin was also responsible for opening the Pittsburgh Museum and Gallery of Fine Art, the earliest of its kind in the region. Smith was given the responsibility of looking after the museum while Lambdin was traveling. Eventually, Lambdin moved his museum to Louisville, Kentucky. Smith remained and set himself up as a portrait painter for a year, but when a theater opened in 1833, he turned to scene painting. At this time, he also began to paint watercolor sketches of the landscape in and around Pittsburgh, later producing fully worked oils from these.

In 1834, the theater to which Smith was attached, moved to Philadelphia. For six years, he worked at the Chestnut and Walnut Street theaters as a highly sought after scenic designer. He went on to design stage scenery and drop curtains for the Philadelphia Academy of Music. This particular project would bring Smith numerous commissions from managers all over the East Coast. As well as his panoramic and landscape painting, he was employed for his illustrative abilities by such prestigious naturalists as Sir Charles Lyell and did similar work for the geological surveys of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Smith served as a board member of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and also belonged to the Artists Fund Society.

Museum Collections:
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA
Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Carnegie Institue, Pittsburgh, PA
Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT
Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA

Mark Murray Fine Paintings is a New York gallery specializing in buying and selling 19th century and early 20th century artwork.

Please contact us if you are interested in selling your Russell Smith paintings or other artwork from the 19th century and early 20th century.