While internationally
acclaimed as a photographer, with contributions in some forty books across the
world, Smith passionately wished to be recognised as an artist, and engraved,
drew or painted every day, but with limited recognition during his lifetime. He
was self-taught, his training being as an architect although he hardly
practised before being drawn into photography, examples of which are in the
entrance hallway of the gallery. He shared a love of the countryside, and of
crafts and traditions within it, and his photography sits comfortably
within the neo-romantic tradition, as was demonstrated by his inclusion in the
BarbicanArtGallery
exhibition on this subject in 1987
Corn and Pomegranate
Oil
This is strong and definite painting with an interesting use of colour, createing an immediate impression
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Drawing by Lamplight
Oil
Smith has an international reputation as a photographer, as the examples on display in the entrance hall demonstrate, but he was also a creative artist, regarding himself chiefly as a painter and practising this important aspect of his life in some way every day. This watercolour, depicting his wife Olive Cook, was painted while on holiday at Nottsmill near Fowey
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Lighthouse Going for a Walk
Oil
1959
The evident pleasure in painting is reflected in this work, probably done while he was on holiday in Southwold, Suffolk and formed part of the Olive Cook Bequest to the Gallery in 2002
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Olive Cook Painting
Oil
1953
The artist's wife caught in a typical stance
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Storm Over Southwold
Oil
1957
Olive Smith (Cook) has left us this description of Storm over Southwold.
"In the late fifties, when Storm over Southwold was painted, my husband and I used to rent a cottage at Blackshore on the banks of the Blyth for a month or two towards the end of each summer. The cottage was the second of a row standing where two paths converged. One led across a salt marsh to Southwold, about a mile away, the other ran alongside the river past an inn and a string of boathouses to the sea. The river path commanded a splendid, changing view of Southwold, first seen rising from the marsh on the gentle eminence of its common, then, as the track neared the sea, taking on the more dramatic aspect of a town poised on a crest of cliff above the tide and the great sweep of a pebbly beach. Much of Edwin Smith's work was the expression of an inward vision, but the weeks at Blackshore were devoted almost wholly to painting and drawing from nature, above all to the celebration of the protean effects of light on that landscape of marsh, river, seashore and distant town. The Fry Gallery picture shows the scene in one of its darkest, most impressive manifestations. The weather was often wild and unsettled as autumn approached but the storm recorded by the painting was exceptional. It gathered rapidly after a gloomy, sullen morning. Dense black clouds, torn into strange and ominous shapes by the vehemence of the wind, piled up over the town, pierced now and then by a shaft of cold light that struck the red Southwold roofs and the towers of church and chalk-white lighthouse and slid along the valleys of the huge, slate-coloured waves arching and crashing onto the shingle. The artist, excited and challenged by the spectacle, set up his easel at that point along the path where the town, the marsh and the shore could all be seen. The squall hurled the easel to the ground. It was a portable, metal, tripodal support and Edwin moved it to the shelter of a low bank and the clapboard wall of a boathouse. Then he weighted it with heavy stones hung from its top in the canvas satchel in which he carried his materials. The easel remained upright. The main elements of the composition had taken shape and the canvas was already animated by the artist's eager response to the formidable subject when blinding rain brought his work to a halt. The picture was completed from an upper window of the cottage while the storm still raged. Edwin loved the craft and all the appurtenances of his art and Storm over Southwold was painted with pigments he had himself ground and on a canvas he had prepared some six years earlier.
