Matthew Smith Landscapes

for Dorothy and Andras Kalman

Matthew Smith in Puy-de-Dome, France early 1930s.

MATTHEW SMITH 1879 - 1959

LANDSCAPES 22nd April - 12th June 2010 CRANE KALMAN GALLERY 178 Brompton Road, London, SW3 1HQ Telephone: 020 7584 7566 www.cranekalman.com Email ckg.ltd@virgin.net

26th June - 5th September 2010 VICTORIA ART GALLERY, BATH Bridge Street, Bath, BA2 4AT Telephone: 01225 477232 www.victoriagal.org.uk Bath & North East Somerset Council

Matthew Smith in 1952.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Andrew Lambirth, Jon Benington and I would like to thank the private collectors who have so very generously lent their paintings to our Matthew Smith Landscape Exhibition.

We are very grateful to Alice Keene for granting copyright permission, and to the Halliday family for their kind support and help in providing photographs of Matthew Smith.

Thank you to The British Council, ING Bank NV (London Branch), The Tate Gallery, Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London and the UK Government Art Collection.

We would also like to thank the Friends of the Victoria Art Gallery for supporting the Bath exhibition.

Sally Kalman April 2010

MATTHEW SMITH: The Painterly Approach The Artist There’s a growing interest in the work of Matthew Smith (1879-1959) after a period of relative neglect. At Tate Britain he has been included in a room given over to the painterly approach, now considered fundamental to British art. No longer is Smith simply consigned to the English Fauve pigeonhole, but is seen as part of a wider tradition of artists intimately concerned with the materiality of paint. It’s a tradition that goes back to Titian and Rembrandt, Turner and Constable, and one which was prevalent in 20th century British art. It can be traced through the cunning pictorial inventions of Sickert and the doughty expressiveness of Bomberg, and is recognized to have absorbed something from that great master of the heavy swinging brushstroke and fierce colour, Chaim Soutine (1894-1943). The Tate display juxtaposed Smith with Bomberg as well as Bacon (quoting Bacon’s famous high assessment of Smith), and traced the line on into the work of Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff.

The type of paint-application which defines artists in this tradition oscillates between a fluid and a more encrusted mode, with Smith established in all his impassioned fluidity. Although well known, Bacon’s remarks are worth quoting once again as they penetrate to the very heart of the matter. Bacon wrote of Smith: ‘He seems to me to be one of the very few English painters since Constable and Turner to be concerned with painting – that is, with attempting to make idea and technique inseparable. Painting in this sense tends towards a complete interlocking of image and paint, so that the image is the paint and vice versa. Here the brush-stroke creates the form and does not merely fill it in. Consequently, every movement of the brush on the canvas alters the shape and implications of the image.’

In Smith’s work we see the brush creating form with caressing dexterity and with the spontaneity that suggests speed and assurance. Perhaps best-known for his luscious, sensuous nudes, Matthew Smith was also a passionate painter of still-life and landscape. His landscapes are a relatively unfamiliar aspect of his work, and this will be the first exhibition to be devoted exclusively to them. Yet they illustrate perhaps better than any of his other paintings how idea and technique interlock, how image and paint become one. It is a deeply sophisticated and intuitive approach to painting, and one that Smith excelled at.

In this exhibition we trace his development through 45 years of endeavour, from his earliest attempts at capturing the light and life of landscape, through the radical statement of his Cornish period to his late mastery.

It makes a fascinating trajectory.

Matthew Smith was a Yorkshireman, born in Halifax in 1879 into a prosperous and cultured Victorian household. He rebelled against this upbringing and determined to be an artist, attending the Slade School in London (1905-7) and then decamping to France, where he studied briefly in Paris with Matisse, before following his own path to Pont-Aven, Dieppe and Etaples. Smith’s best friend in these early years was Alden Brooks, an American writer he met in France, in Grez sur Loing in 1912 or 1913. It was Brooks who later introduced him to Roderic O’Conor, friend of Gauguin and a dedicated exponent of Post-Impressionism much influenced by van Gogh. O’Conor was an experimental artist, given to strong colour and richly applied impasto, and his example was an important influence on Smith.

So also was the First World War, though he was declared unfit (because of his poor eyesight) for active service. He was however put in command of a hundred men detailed to clear battlefields of abandoned equipment and bury the German dead.

Although not actually fighting, the Labour Corps was required to operate in gruelling and exposed conditions: under shellfire and gas attacks. Smith was wounded, and on his recovery sent to work in a prisoner-of-war camp in Abbeville, where he spent the remainder of the war, never managing (unlike so many of his contemporaries) to be safely selected as a war artist.

After the war, France was to remain a focus for him, an endless source of inspiration. Apart from his Cornish sojourn in 1920, it was the landscape of France that he elected most often to paint, and it was perhaps the country he felt happiest in.

The Landscape It used to be thought that Smith painted relatively few landscapes, but it has now emerged (after the vast labour of love which is John Gledhill’s catalogue raisonné, published last year) that he actually painted more than a hundred. In an oeuvre of some 800 paintings, the landscapes thus constitute a more significant theme than hitherto generally supposed. The first recorded landscape paintings date to 1911 and are both included here: one depicts a wooded grove in afternoon shadow with the sea in the background, the other a cottage under a moody sky. Both were painted near Dieppe in a style much influenced by the Impressionists, but already showing the corrugated wriggly brushstroke that was to become a Smith hallmark, and an interest in surface texture. They are fresh and enjoyable pictures, as is Small French Landscape, probably painted a year or two later, and really the painting of a road disappearing through a village.

This was a favourite Smith motif, and one which recurs in many of his drawings, but it is the paint handling which is of particular interest here. It is probably unfinished, yet this picture has an easy authority and looseness quite unexpected after the Impressionist studies. Smith has become much more confident, has opened up his brushstrokes and allowed light into the composition in such a way that it became part of the very structure of the painting. There is a new interest in shape and how paint covers the canvas. All this was to be taken further in the post-war work, but already Smith was moving towards his mature style, a development to be seen most clearly in his marvellous Fitzroy Street nudes of 1916, probably the nearest Smith came to being a Fauve painter. But the real catalyst – at least in terms of his landscape painting – was to be a visit to Cornwall in 1920.

Writing to Alden Brooks that year, Smith tried to describe his Cornish hideaway. ‘I took my family right back to Sussex and returned like an empty packing case – I felt I was not yet equal to facing Fitzroy life and was much impressed by the beauty of this neighbourhood. St Columb Major where I have settled myself is the natural centre of it all; it is absolutely unknown to painters who continue to cluster like limpets around Newlyn and St Ives; some day I think they may come this way. I would like you to see it, unhappily I cannot describe things, even if I could I should not describe it as Indescribable! You know exactly what Indescribable Beauty is like n’est-ce pas? Well – this is different. It is equally unlike the cards I am sending, it is country to walk about in, it is accidenté, amusing, like a well shuffled pack of cards (what would the poets say) mais c’est belle il faut le voir.’ Or in other words, Smith says it has a beauty you have to see for yourself. His use of the word accidenté, which can mean eventful or uneven, is revealing. Evidently Smith found the countryside inspiring in no ordinary terms.

At St Columb Major Smith painted some of his finest early landscapes, which are also some of his best-known. He stayed there for three or four months and produced a series of wonderfully dark, sombre works. Dramatic, if not actually lowering, these paintings recall James Joyce’s ‘heaventree’ in Ulysses, ‘hung with humid nightblue fruit’. It was clearly a period of almost mystical inspiration, which was not to be long-lived. When Smith returned in early 1921, after Christmas spent with his family, he could no longer paint in the same way. The moment had passed. Some commentators have interpreted these paintings as hellish in intent or as evocations of war, as Smith’s anguished response to the savagery and inhumanity he witnessed at first hand. But are they so desperately gloomy? Dark reds and crimson, viridian, Prussian blue and black, they glow with the same sort of richness one finds in Rouault; a richness which is spiritually affirmative, not destructive.

The Cornish work is a self-contained episode in Smith’s art, a series of remarkable paintings making a radical statement about colour and form. They constitute an unrepeatable moment of vision which is also a turning-point in the artist’s development. A peak of intensity was reached which was evidently some sort of emotional watershed for him, but I find it hard to accept that the Cornish landscape was for Smith imbued with suffering, a mirror of the atrocities he had seen in France. Interestingly, other critics have discerned too much control in the design of these paintings, and judged them claustrophobic, with none of the freedom of his later work. It seems their truth is legion. They are very personal paintings and require each of us to respond to them individually.

These pictures – of a decorative steeple on a garden wall, of a church, of a winding road and a garden – were mostly painted from the windows of his lodgings. The paint is thin, not heavily worked, but the colours have a fervent deliberation in their unusual harmonies. Smith took considerable care over the construction of these paintings, and even made preparatory studies for his compositions, as can be seen in the pencil drawing Cornish Garden with Monkey Puzzle made for the oil of the same title. This was not to be the usual practice of his maturity, when he tended to make drawings, watercolours or pastels as works in their own right and not as studies for paintings. (However, on occasion a motif intrigued him sufficiently for him to return to it repeatedly. This can be seen in the series of drawings of ships in Dieppe harbour, 1926, or the view through a stone balustrade at Villeneuve-les-Avignon in 1956.)

After the intensity came the reckoning. When he had completed 20 or so Cornish subjects, Smith was unable to paint any more, and no doubt as a direct consequence his mental state deteriorated throughout 1921. Finally in March 1922 he was admitted to the Clinique Valmont in Lausanne for treatment by the highly-respected Swiss psychiatrist, Dr Roger Vittoz.

He was probably suffering from a debilitating form of nervous tension which the treatment seemed to alleviate. Certainly he managed to paint a dozen or so landscapes at Lyons in 1922, during and after Vittoz’ treatment. The colour in these paintings is still extreme – look, for instance, at the Lyons landscape in the Government Art Collection – but the handling is less controlled than the Cornish pictures. Evidently it was not an easy period. Smith wrote to Alden Brooks of ‘the difficulty of piecing oneself together amid new surroundings and adjusting oneself, the feeling of what one is losing by too repeatedly doing this.’

And again Smith writes: ‘It is difficult to know whether one is on a good track is on a track at all in a place one is not

accustomed to, still one of the conscious things I have tried for is to gain a certain souplesse [Alice Keene notes that Smith refers here to the suppleness encouraged by the therapy of Dr Vittoz], at the risk of becoming facile, if I can gain this without becoming facile it can at least become something useful later on.’ In fact, this new suppleness or looseness of handling became a key feature of Smith’s later work.

The Car It was possession of a car that really opened up the French landscape to Smith. In 1930, Brooks helped him choose a Citroën, which became essential for conveying him out into the landscape in search of motifs. The car had to be tough – it was used a lot over rough country and unmade-up tracks, rather than the ubiquitous metalled roads of today – and Smith was not a careful driver. In 1932, writing from Arles, Smith admitted to Brooks: ‘I had a tremendous journey and nearly killed myself with too much driving and my back axel broken in parts which was an anxiety all the time, and a terrible noise, wanted to get this mended en route but could not get the money together finally got it mended here reasonably 400fr (a mending of the axel had once cost me 880fr at Clermont-Ferrand this of course made me nervous). Arles extremely dull not a soul to speak to except garcons chauffeurs garagistes etc.’

With a car at his command, Smith could explore the countryside until he found a stretch of landscape that excited him. There is, for instance, a sumptuous small painting dated to around 1935, called simply Landscape (Aix). The horizon line, where the paint thickens yet lightens to a creamy yellow impasto, is inflamed with pink and powered with dark greenish blue above.

The driving brush-marks which activate the whole of this picture are passionate but not crude, giving the impression of speed and vigour – the kind of weather change that a strong wind chasing the cloud can impart. Like many of Smith’s landscapes, the painting is built around blue and green with enlivening touches of red and yellow. The speed of execution and its apparent certainty belie the hesitant nature of Smith the man, who seemed more likely to hover (his nickname was ‘the moth’) rather than act. Yet the painterly attack here is impossible to mistake or misinterpret: it’s a powerful statement full of expressively driven gestures. The dark masses of the foliage, paler where the light falls on it, identify the picture space, which recedes to the red-draped hills on the horizon. The middle passage of paler blue, like a lake, holds the centre of the picture in some degree of calmness, between more fiery emotions.

Crucial to the success of the painting are two brief diagonal bands of deep pink, positioned very near to the front, the smaller one echoing the bold emphasis of the other. Do these highly dramatic elements have a descriptive role to play? This hardly seems to matter, so essential are these marks (and these colours) to the overall image. They are vital bits of paint in a work of art composed of paint, in which image and paint are one. The main function of this painting – and, by extension, all of Smith’s landscape paintings – is not to describe a place in a topographical sense, but to evoke the feeling of it, to summon up a deeply personal interpretation of place through the transfiguration that can be miraculously achieved by coloured mud on canvas. And these delicious pink diagonals are what lift this painting into a realm above the ordinary.

Looking at this painting I am reminded of the landscapes of James Dickson Innes (1887-1914), the friend and associate of Augustus John who died tragically young and full of promise. At his best, Innes was a visionary with a pure colour sense who was able to incorporate into his art aspects of Modernism (a long look at Matisse, for instance), without compromising his own individuality. The spirit of Innes is at work in the best of Augustus John’s pre-First World War landscapes, and it will be remembered that John was one of Matthew Smith’s oldest friends. Although Smith’s handling is thicker and more substantially expressive than Innes’ (it might be said that if Innes liked to dab, Smith liked to splurge), there is a shared intent in the attitude to paint and its possibilities. Once again the physicality of paint is celebrated, its appearance as stuff, not as a thin film of colour over drawing, a form of tinting. Smith’s was an altogether more robust corporeal approach, a relish for the paint-matter as much as for the subject-matter.

When he was younger, Smith had been more prepared to paint or draw the village street or the town square, or the outskirts where the urban gave way to the distinctly rural. As he grew older, he needed a more complete immersion in the wildness of nature – untenanted countryside, far away from habitation. This was accessible so long as he ran a car, but in 1947 he made the decision to sell his once-trusty roadster. He wrote to Mary Keene from Aix-en-Provence: ‘Of course I feel sad about the car but perhaps will get one again one day just to trundle me out into the country to paint. I used to love getting out to some place where one was quite alone and where it was beautiful and where it seemed to belong to one...’

After this, Smith painted fewer landscapes. In 1956 he wrote to Mary Keene from Aix: ‘I took an auto yesterday to where the country becomes paintable just to see how much it would cost, but I found it would cost far too much, so am now thinking again...’ He admits that he was ‘longing to do some landscapes’ though the weather was unfavourable. At the end of September he wrote again: ‘Had to give up my painting efforts last two days as it is all too harrowing getting friends to take me out into country and fetch me or taking taxi and practically no result so depressing. Shall make another effort next week...’ In October he wrote that he had been invited out in a friend’s car, but was doubtful if it was worth going: ‘When I had a car I could of course get to places that really meant something to me and which I knew – new places do not help much.’

This, of course, was the result of only painting directly from nature, in front of the subject: no studio landscapes for Smith.

Still, despite the transport problems, he managed to produce interesting work into the 1950s, continuing to celebrate the material facts of nature, and the material facts of paint, with a remarkably even hand. Francis Bacon saw painting as a game of chance based on intuition and luck, a game in which he considered Matthew Smith had the gods on his side. In the consistency and generous physicality of Smith’s landscape vision, in its beauty and discovered truth, this can scarcely be denied.

Andrew Lambirth April 2010 My grateful thanks to Alice Keene, the daughter of Smith’s close companion Mary Keene, who was both hospitable and helpful, and who supplied the texts of the letters quoted above.

1. Landscape (I), 1911 oil on board 8.5 x 10.5 inches (21.5 x 26.7cm)

2. Landscape (II), 1911 oil on board 10 x 10.5 inches (25.4 x 26.7cm)

3. Small French Landscape, 1914 oil on canvas 19.75 x 25.5 inches (50.2 x 64.8cm)

4. Cornish Landscape with Monkey

Puzzle, 1920 oil on canvas 24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8cm)

5. Cornish Church, 1920 oil on canvas 21 x 25.5 inches (53.3 x 64.2cm)

6. Steeple in Cornwall, 1920 oil on canvas 20 x 15.5 inches (50.8 x 39.3cm)

7.

Cornish Landscape (The Orange Road), 1920 oil on canvas 21 x 25.5 inches (53.3 x 64.8cm)

8. Landscape near

Lyons (IV), 1922 oil on canvas 18 x 21 inches (45.7 x 53.3cm)

9. Lyons, 1922 oil on canvas 14.5 x 18 inches (37 x 45.7cm)

10. Près de Lyons, 1922 oil on canvas 15 x 18 inches (38 x 46cm)

Matthew Smith on the cross-channel ferry.

10a. Ships in dock,

Dieppe, 1926 pencil on paper 8.25 x 8.25 inches (21 x 21 cm)

11. Dieppe Harbour

(III), 1926 oil on canvas 25.5 x 31.75 inches (65 x 81cm)

12. Landscape, South of France, c.1936 oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches (46 x 61cm)

13. Montagne St.

Victoire, 1923 oil on canvas 22 x 30 inches (56 x 66cm)

14. Storm

in the Mediterranean, c.1922 oil on canvas 18 x 21 inches (46 x 54cm)

15. Winter in Provence, 1937 oil on canvas 21.5 x 25.5 inches (55 x 65cm)

16. Landscape (Aix), c.1935 oil on canvas 13.75 x 17.75 inches (35 x 45cm)

17. Landscape,

Près d’Avignon, 1956 oil on canvas 12 x 16 inches (30.5 x 40.7cm)

18. Landscape at Aix (I), 1932 oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches (51 x 61cm)

19. Provencal Landscape, 1938/40 oil on canvas 22 x 26.75 inches (60 x 67.9cm)

20. Yorkshire Landscape (II), c.1931 (possibly 1926) oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches (50.7 x 60.9cm)

21. Woolhope Landscape, 1932 oil on canvas 14 x 21 inches (35 x 53cm)

22. Yorkshire Landscape, 1926 oil on canvas 13.5 x 17.5 inches (34.3 x 44.5cm)

23.

Landscape with Clouds, c.1933 oil on canvas 21.5 x 25.5 inches (55 x 65cm)

24. La

Colle, c.1935 oil on canvas 18 x 25.5 inches (46 x 65cm)

25. Cornish Landscape (IV), 1920 oil on canvas 24 x 30 inches (61 x 76.2cm)

26. Landscape Evening, Cagnes, 1935 oil on canvas 12.5 x 28.5 inches (46 x 55cm)

27. Mountainous Landscape, South of France, c.1932-40 watercolour 14 x 20 inches (35.5 x 50.7cm)

29. Landscape near Lyons, c.1922 watercolour 7.5 x 8.25 inches (19 x 21cm)

28. View

from a Balcony to Mountains Beyond a Lake, 1956, pastel 8.7 x 11.2 inches (22.2 x 28.5cm)

30. Landscape, (verso Portrait of Mary Keene), c.1950-54 oil on panel 9.5 x 5.5 inches (24.1 x 14cm)

CHRONOLOGY 1879 1895-7 1901-5 1905 1906-7 1908 1910 1911 1912 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1932

Born 22 October in Halifax, the son of Frederic and Frances Smith.

Attended Giggleswick School.

Attended evening classes at Manchester’s Municipal College of Art. Enrolled at the Slade School, London.

Met and fell in love with Gwen Salmond.

Left for Pont-Aven, Brittany.

Lived in Montparnasse, Paris, where he briefly attended the Atelier Matisse.

Showed at Salon des Indépendants. Remained in France, returning for family Christmas.

Married Gwen Salmond.

Travelled to South of France for some months. Summer visit to England to see his father, who died in August.

War prevented return to France. First visit to Cornwall.

Son Frederic Mark Smith born.

Painted in London. Summer holiday with Sickert in Devon. Second son Dermot Smith born.

In November began army training in Hertfordshire.

Attached to Labour Company as temporary second lieutenant. In September wounded during battle of Passchendaele.

Hospitalised in England.

Passed fit and promoted to lieutenant and posted to prisoner-of-war camp at Abbeville.

Met Roderic O’Conor in Paris. Demobbed in March.

Summer holiday with family in Cornwall. Moved in Autumn to St. Columb Major, where he painted many landscapes.

In London, Paris and Brittany. Winter in Grez with his family.

Entered Clinique Valmont near Lake Geneva, then treated in Lyons by Dr d’Espiney. Summer visit to St. Cyr (Rhone).

Met and fell in love with Vera Cunningham. Moved with Vera to 6 bis Villa Brune, Paris. Painted many nudes.

Continued showing with London Group.

Roger Fry bought nudes by Smith and O’Conor for the Contemporary Art Society.

In Paris. Showed with London Group. Gave up Villa Brune.

Paintings by Matthew Smith at the Mayor Gallery, first one-man show.

Lived for several months in Dieppe.

Paintings by Matthew Smith at Alex Reid & Lefevre in December.

The Tate Gallery bought Peonies.

A Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings by Matthew Smith at Arthur Tooth & Son, who became his dealers.

Represented in the Carnegie International Exhibition, Pittsburgh, USA. April: Matthew Smith: Exhibition of Recent Paintings at Tooth’s. In Woolhope, near Hereford, with Vera.

Spent time with his family in September and drove to Arles and Aix in Autumn. Painted landscapes.

1933 1934 1935 1936 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1947 1949 1950 1951 1953 1954 1955 1956 1958

1959 1960

Painting nudes in Paris. In December drove to South of France, stayed at Cagnes-sur-Mer. Exhibition of his paintings in The Hague. In London for exhibition Recent Paintings by Matthew Smith at Tooth’s May/August.

In Cagnes, apart from August visit to family in Norfolk. Painted landscapes around Cagnes.

Tate Gallery bought Cyclamen.

In Cagnes until move to Aix en Provence, in March. Exhibition of Recent Paintings at Tooth’s in November.

Tate Gallery bought Model Turning.

Showed twenty-three paintings at Venice Biennale.

In London for Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings by Matthew Smith (the Jacob Epstein.

Collection) at the Leicester Galleries. Showed in Trois Peintres Anglais, Galerie Bing, Paris.

Included in British Paintings since Whistler, National Gallery, London.

May: His son Dermot Smith wounded. June: His son Frederick Smith killed in war.

December: Dermot Smith killed in war.

January: took studio at 11 Cunningham Place, London. Painted Mary Keene. Paintings by Matthew Smith, Alex Reid & Lefevre, London and Jacob Epstein, Matthew Smith at Temple Newsam, Leeds.

The Tate bought The Young Actress.

Publication of Matthew Smith by Philip Hendy.

Paintings by Matthew Smith of the Years 1938-1940, Tooth’s.

Visited Francis Halliday in Wales.

Received CBE. Matthew Smith: 15 Paintings from 1921-1946 at the Mayor Gallery, London.

Exhibition of watercolour and drawings at Redfern Gallery. Twenty-seven works exhibited at the Venice Biennale.

Paintings of Various Periods by Matthew Smith, Tooth’s.

Matthew Smith at the Tate Gallery. Visits Cornwall, Norfolk and Aix. Visit to Francis Halliday in Wales.

Knighted.

Vera Cunningham died. August: Smith admitted to Clinique Valmont.

Two Masters of Colour: Matthew Smith and Roderic O’Conor, Roland, Browse and Delbanco.

Awarded honorary doctorate by University of London.

Gwen Smith died. March/April operation Guy’s Hospital. Spring: Three Masters of British Painting: Sir Matthew Smith, Victor Pasmore and Francis Bacon, Arts Council.

October: second operation at Royal Marsden Hospital.

Died 29 September in London.

October/December: Matthew Smith 1879-1959 at Royal Academy, London.

This text is based on the chronology in Alice Keene, The Two Mr Smiths (1995), with grateful thanks.

Front Cover: A Winding Road – Cornish Landscape, 1920 oil on canvas 20.1 x 24.5 inches (53.25 x 65cm)

5. Cornish Church, 1920 oil on canvas 21 x 25.5 inches (53.3 x 64.2cm)

Provenance: Mrs Pollock; British Council.

Exhibited: Mayor 1926 (No. 7): ‘Yorkshire Artists’, Leeds City Art Gallery 1939 (No. 67); Leeds, Temple Newsam, 1942 (No. 96); Tate Gallery 1950 (No. 251); Tate Gallery 1953 (No. 12); ‘Three Masters of Modern British Painting’, Arts Council 1958 (No. 3 ill. cat. b&b pl. I); Royal Academy 1960 (No. 15).

Literature: Allen and Unwin 1962, ill. col. pl. II; Beaverbrook 1962, ill. b&w p. 10; Dennis Farr (London, 1978), p. 266, ill. b&w pl. 82b; The British Council Collection, 1934-1984 (London, 1984), ill. b&w pl. p. 122; John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers 2009, Surrey, ill. b&w p. 81 pl. 86.

Lent by British Council, London

Provenance: Mr T.W. Earp; Mr A.J. Sturgeon (Mr F. Major); Tate Gallery.

Exhibited: Mayor 1926?; Venice Biennale 1950 (No. 37); Tate Gallery 1953 (No. II, ill. b&w pl. 7); Royal Academy 1960 (No. 31); Barbican 1983 (No. 25).

Literature: David Piper, ‘Sir Matthew Smith, 1879-1959’, The Listener (8 October 1959), p. 565, ill. b&w p. 565; Allen & Unwin 1962, ill. col. pl. 15; John Rothenstein, The Tate Gallery (London, 1962), ill. b&w pl. p. 257; Chamot, Farr and Butler, Tate Gallery, Modern British Paintings, etc., Vol. 2 (London, 1965), ill. col. pl. 14; Charles Harrison, English Art and Modernism, 1900-1939, 2nd edn (New Haven, 1994), pp. 153-4, ill. b&w pl. 76. John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings,Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 78 pl. 77. © Tate, London 2010. Lent by Tate purchased 1949. Victoria Art Gallery Exhibition only.

1 . Landscape (I), 1911 oil on board 8.5 x 10.5 inches (21.5 x 26.7cm) Provenance: The Artist; The Artist’s niece; Private Collection.

Exhibited: Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, 1993-2000 (on various occasions / on loan) Literature: Yorke 1997, ill. col. pl. 14. John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, John Gledhill, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 56 pl. 10. © The Artist’s Estate 2. Landscape (II), 1911 oil on board 10 x 10.5 inches (25.4 x 26.7cm) Provenance: The Artist’s Estate; Mrs Mary Keene; Mrs Alice Kadel.

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 56 pl. 11. © The Artist’s Estate 3. Small French Landscape, 1914 oil on canvas 19075 x 25.5 inches (50.2 x 64.8cm) Provenance: The Artist’s Estate; Mrs Mary Keene; Corporation of London.

Exhibited: Arts Council 1972 (No. 4 as Grez-sur Barbican, Concourse Gallery, 1996).

Literature: Alice Keene, The Two Mr Smiths – The Life and Work of Matthew Smith, Lund Humphries Publishers, London, 1995, ill. in colour pl. 64; John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 59 pl. 19. © The Artist’s Estate. Lent by the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London.

Victoria Art Gallery Exhibition only.

4. Cornish Landscape with Monkey Puzzle, 1920 oil on canvas 24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8cm) inscr. MS bottom right Provenance: Mr G.P. Dudley Wallis 1920s; Mr Eardley Knollys; Mr & Mrs F.W. Halliday; Private Collection.

Exhibited: Tooth 1929 (No. 6); World’s Fair Exhibition, New York, 1939 (No. 122); Tate Gallery 1953 (No. 13); Royal Academy 1960 (No. 9); Waddington 1968 (No. 2); Tooth/ Roland, Browse & Delbanco 1976 (No. 25); Barbican 1983 (No. 24); Crane Kalman 1990 (No. 2), col. ill. cat. p. 7); Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, 1997.

Literature: Allen & Unwin 1962, ill. col. pl. 14; Yorke 1997, ill. col. pl. 14; Yorke 1997, ill. col. pl. 25. John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 77 pl. 75. © The Artist’s Estate

6. Steeple in Cornwall, 1920 oil on canvas 20 x 15.5 inches (50.8 x 39.3cm) Provenance: Mr and Mrs F.W. Halliday; Private Collection.

Exhibited: Royal Academy 1960 (No. 13); Waddington 1968 (No. 1).

Literature: Allen & Unwin 1962, ill. col. pl. 13; Yorke 1997, ill. col. pl. 24 John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 77 pl. 76, and ill. in colour pl. 11. © The Artist’s Estate 7. Cornish Landscape (The Orange Road), 1920 oil on canvas 21 x 25.5 inches (53.3 x 64.8cm) Provenance: Harold Smith, Esq. Private Collection, London. Crane Kalman Gallery, London.

Exhibited: A Memorial Exhibition of works by Sir Matthew Smith CBE, 1897-1959, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1960, Cat. No. 19 Matthew Smith – A Loan Exhibition, Arthur Tooth & sons & Roland Browse & Delbanco, Apr – May 1976, No. 8, reproduced in colour on cover of catalogue; Knoedler/Waddington 1979 (No. I); Barbican Art Gallery 1983 (No. 23?).

Literature: Matthew Smith, published by George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London,1962, reproduced in colour, plate No. 12 John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 82 pl. 90. © The Artist’s Estate 8. Landscape near Lyons (IV), 1922 oil on canvas 18 x 21 inches (45.7 x 53.3cm) inscr. MS verso 1922 Provenance: Sir Michael Sadler; Mr D.A. West; Government Art Collection.

Exhibited: Leeds, Temple Newsam, 1942 (No. 99).

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 88 pl. 107. © UK Government Art Collection (Crown Copyright). Lent by UK Government Art Collection Victoria Art Gallery Exhibition only.

9. Lyons, 1922 oil on canvas 14.5 x 18 inches (37 x 45.7cm) Provenance: Dr Taliano, October 1980 Lady Salmon; Private Collection, Eire.

Exhibited: Alex, Reid & Lefevre 1942 (No. 18); Crane Kalman 1990 (No. 8, ill. cat. pl. p. 17).

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 86 pl. 103. © The Artist’s Estate

10. Près de Lyons, 1922 oil on canvas 15 x 18 inches (38 x 46cm) signed lower right; titled, dated and inscr. on the reverse

15. Winter in Provence, 1937 oil on canvas 21.5 x 25.5 inches (55 x 65cm)

Provenance: Mme. Meerson, France E. Shaw-Kennedy Esq. F. J. Farley, Esq. Private Collection, England.

Exhibited: Matthew Smith, Arts Council, 1938, No. 9; Tooth/Roland, Browse & Delbanco 1976 (No. 26); Barbican Art Gallery 1983 (No. 29).

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 86 pl. 102, and ill. in colour pl. 14. © The Artist’s Estate

Provenance: Captain R.W. Q. Henriques; Mr Stewart Granger; Colonel Robert Adeane; Tate Gallery (presented anonymously in 1982).

Exhibited: Tate Gallery, 1953 (No. 64); Royal Academy 1960 (No. 187).

Literature: Albert Garrett, Matthew Smith, Studio, Vol. 146 (1953), ill. p. 182; John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 179 pl. 442. © Tate, London 2010. Lent by Tate (presented anonymously through the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1982). Victoria Art Gallery Exhibition only.

10a. Ships in dock, Dieppe, 1926 pencil on paper 8.25 x 8.25 inches (21 x 21cm) © The Artist’s Estate. Lent by the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London.

16. Landscape (Aix), c.1935 oil on canvas 13.75 x 17.75 inches (35 x 45cm)

11. Dieppe Harbour (III), 1926 oil on canvas inscr. MS b.l. 25.5 x 31.75 inches (65 x 81cm) Provenance: Private Collection, Berkshire.

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 125 pl. 243. © The Artist’s Estate 12. Landscape, South of France, c.1936 oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches (46 x 61cm) inscr. MS b.r.

Provenance: Tooth; Lord & Lady Attenborough.

Exhibited: Tooth 1960 (No. 16, ill. b&w cat.).

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 179 pl. 440. © The Artist’s Estate 13. Montagne St. Victoire, 1923 oil on canvas 22 x 30 inches (56 x 66cm) inscr MS b.r.; verso ‘Ai/32’ Provenance: Mr Harcourt Johnstone.

Mr and Mrs F.W. Halliday; Private Collection.

Exhibited: Tooth 1934 (No. 27); Venice Biennale 1938 (No. 41); Leeds, Temple Newsam, 1942 (No. 118), Mayor Gallery 1949 (No. 9); Tate Gallery 1953 (No. 48); Tib Lane Gallery, Manchester 1959 (No. 8); Royal Academy 1960 (No. 203); Welsh Committee, Arts Council, 1966 (No. 25); Waddington 1968 (No. 11, ill. cat.); Tooth/Roland, Browse & Delbanco 1976 (No. 28); Knoelder/ Waddington 1979 (No. 9); Barbican Art Gallery 1983 (No. 60, ill. cat. col. pl. p. 44).

Literature: The Artist (September 1934), ill.; Denys Sutton, ‘English Artist Who Revelled in Colour’, Country Life (27 October 1960), p. 962, ill; John Russell, ‘Matthew Smith in France’, Apollo (July 1962), pp. 372-6, ill. col. pl. III; Allen & Unwin 1962, ill. col. pl. 39; Yorke 1997, p. 153, ill. col. pl. 47; John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 168 pl. 393 and ill. in colour pl. 39. © The Artist’s Estate 14. Storm in the Mediterranean, c.1922 oil on canvas 18 x 21 inches (46 x 54cm) inscr. MS bottom left Provenance: J.S.M. Hebden; Montpelier; Crane Kalman; Private Collection.

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 89 pl. 113. © The Artist’s Estate

Provenance: Private Collection, London.

Exhibited: Tooth & Sons. © The Artist’s Estate 17. Landscape, Près d’Avignon, 1956 oil on canvas 12 x 16 inches (30.5 x 40.7cm) inscr. verso Matthew Smith pres Avignon 1956 Provenance: The Artist’s Estate; Mrs Mary Keene; Mrs Alice Kadel.

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 266 pl. 733. © The Artist’s Estate 18. Landscape at Aix (I), 1932 oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches (51 x 61cm) Provenance: Sir Jacob Epstein; Lord Croft Exhibited: Leicester Galleries 1939 (No. 12); Royal Academy 1960 (No. 176).

Literature: Beaverbrook 1962, ill. b&w p. 22; Yorke 1997, ill. col. pl. 48 Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, John Gledhill, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 170 pl. 399. © The Artist’s Estate 19. Provencal Landscape, 1938/40 oil on canvas 22 x 26.75 inches (60 x 67.9cm) Provenance: Tooth & Son; Private Collection, London. © The Artist’s Estate 20. Yorkshire Landscape (II), c.1931 (possibly 1926) oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches (50.7 x 60.9cm) inscr. MS b.l.

Provenance: Piccadilly Gallery, London 1965; Private Collection 1987.

Exhibited: Brook Street Gallery, London.

Literature: Yorke 1997, ill. col. pl. 37; John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 156 pl. 352. © The Artist’s Estate 21. Woolhope Landscape, 1932 oil on canvas 14 x 21 inches (35 x 53cm) inscr. MS b.r., ‘Woolhope Hereford 32’ verso Provenance: Private Collection 1932 (gift from the artist); Private Collection (by descent).

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 168 pl. 392. © The Artist’s Estate

22. Yorkshire Landscape, 1926 oil on canvas 13.5 x 17.5 inches (34.3 x 44.5cm)

28.View from a Balcony to Mountains Beyond a Lake, 1956 pastel 8.7 x 11.2 inches (22.2 x 28.5cm)

Provenance: The Artist; Mr and Mrs F.W. Halliday 24 September 1935; Private Collection.

Exhibited: Royal Academy 1960 (No. 69).

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 124 pl. 239. © The Artist’s Estate

Literature:

23. Landscape with Clouds, c.1933 oil on canvas 21.5 x 25.5 inches (55x 65cm) inscr. verso MS b.l.

Provenance: Dr. E. M. Herbert; Mr and Mrs F.W. Halliday; Private Collection.

Exhibited: Royal Academy 1960, (No. 186); Crane Kalman Gallery 1990 (No. 2, ill. cat. col. pl. p. 37).

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 173 pl. 417. © The Artist’s Estate 24. La Colle, c.1935 oil on canvas 18 x 25.5 inches (46 x 65cm) inscr. MS b.r.; verso ‘Var 22.6.42 FH’ Provenance: Mr D. Hart; Private Collection; Crane Kalman; Private Collection 1983.

Exhibited: Alex, Reid & Lefevre 1942 (No. 12, as ‘La Colle, Alpes Maritimes’); Crane Kalman.

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 180 pl. 443. © The Artist’s Estate 25. Cornish Landscape (IV), 1920 oil on canvas 24 x 30 inches (61 x 76.2cm) Provenance: The Artist’s Estate; Mrs Mary Keene; Corporation of London.

Exhibited: Arts Council 1972 (No. 10); Barbican, Concourse Gallery, 1996.

Literature: Alice Keene 1995, ill. col. pl. 19 John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 83 pl. 93. © The Artist’s Estate. Lent by Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London.

Victoria Art Gallery Exhibition only.

26. Landscape Evening, Cagnes, 1935 oil on canvas 12.5 x 28.5 inches (46 x 55cm) inscr. MS b.l.

Provenance: Redfern Gallery; British Council.

Exhibited: Mayor Gallery 1949 (No. 3); ‘Artists Anglais Contemporains’, British Council Exhibition, Musée Municipal, Macon, France, 1952 (No. 15); Tate Gallery 1953 (No. 56).

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 176 pl. 429. © The Artist’s Estate. Lent by The British Council, London 27. Mountainous Landscape, South of France, c.1932-40? watercolour 14 x 20 inches (35.5 x 50.7cm) Literature:

Alice Keene, The Two Mr Smiths – The Life and Work of Matthew Smith, Lund Humphries Publishers, London, 1995, ill. in colour pl. 64. © The Artist’s Estate. Lent by the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London.

Victoria Art Gallery Exhibition only.

Alice Keene, The Two Mr Smiths – The Life and Work of Matthew Smith, Lund Humphries Publishers, London, 1995, ill. in colour pl. 160. © The Artist’s Estate. Lent by the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London.

Victoria Art Gallery Exhibition only.

29. Landscape near Lyons, c.1922 watercolour 8.25 x 8.25 inches (21 x 21cm) © The Artist’s Estate. Lent by the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London.

Victoria Art Gallery Exhibition only.

30. Landscape (verso Portrait of Mary Keene), c.1950-54 oil on panel 9.5 x 5 .5 inches (24.1 x 14cm)

Provenance: The Artist’s Estate; Mrs Mary Keene; Mrs Alice Kadel.

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers, Surrey, 2009, ill. b&w p. 241 pl. 649. © The Artist’s Estate Not illustrated in the catalogue Dieppe Harbour II 1926 oil on canvas 23.75 x 28.75 inches (60.3 x 73cm) Provenance: The Artist’s Estate; Mrs Mary Keene; Corporation of London.

Exhibited: Arts Council 1972 (No. 24, as ‘French Port’); Browse & Darby 1983 (No. 15); Barbican, Concourse Gallery, 1995.

Literature: Alice Keene 1995, ill. col. pl. 45; John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers 2009, Surrey, ill. b&w p. 125 pl. 242. © The Artist’s Estate. Lent by the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London.

Victoria Art Gallery Exhibition only.

Landscape, South of France, c. 1934-7 (unfinished) oil on canvas 25 x 30.9 inches (63.5 x 78.7cm) Provenance: The Artist’s Estate; Mrs Mary Keene; Corporation of London.

Literature: John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers 2009, Surrey, ill. b&w p. 179 pl. 439. © The Artist’s Estate. Lent by the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London.

Victoria Art Gallery Exhibition only.

Landscape at Villeneuve les Avignons, 1956 oil on canvas 12 x 10 inches (30.5 x 25.4cm) Provenance: The Artist’s Estate; Mrs Mary Keene; Corporation of London.

Literature: Alice Keene 1995, ill. col. pl. 161; John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers 2009, Surrey, ill. b&w p. 266 pl. 734. © The Artist’s Estate. Lent by the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London.

Victoria Art Gallery Exhibition only.

Landscape in Provence, c.1956 oil on canvas 20 x 24.2 inches (50.8 x 61.3cm) Provenance: The Artist’s Estate; Mrs Mary Keene; Corporation of London.

Literature: Alice Keene 1995, ill. col. pl. 162; John Gledhill, Matthew Smith Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries Publishers 2009, Surrey, ill. b&w p. 266 pl. 735. © The Artist’s Estate. Lent by the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London.

Victoria Art Gallery Exhibition only.

MATTHEW SMITH LANDSCAPES

ISBN -13

978-0-9503599-5-3

Matthew Smith with Mr and Mrs F.W. Halliday at Cefn Bryntalch, Montgomeryshire mid 1890s.

Front Cover: A Winding Road – Cornish Landscape, 1920 oil on canvas 20.1 x 24.5 inches (53.25 x 65cm)