Swann is delighted to offer the following selection of works from the collection of
American painter/printmaker James D. Smillie.
Smillie (1833-1909), a prominent New York artist known for his engravings and
landscape paintings, owned these works in the late 19th century and then the
pieces descended through his family to the current owners. There are also several
works created by Smillie himself, including views of the Catskills and Adirondacks
in upstate New York (lots 9-12).
Smillie trained in New York at an early age with his father, James H. Smillie (1807-
1885), who was also an engraver. During the 1850s, James D. Smillie gained a
reputation as a skilled banknote engraver and a masterful printmaker, producing
engravings after well-known 19th century American paintings by the likes of
Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt and Winslow Homer as well as engravings of his
own design. Among his most famous engravings is
The Rocky Mountains (Lander's
Peak)
, 1865-66, based on the celebrated oil painting by Bierstadt, now at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
From the 1860s onward, Smillie made numerous backwoods sketching and
painting trips to the Catskills and Adirondack mountains of upstate New York.
During the early 1870s, Smillie and his brother George, who was also an artist,
traveled the American west, through the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and the
Sierra Nevada Mountains in California.
Smillie was an able promoter of American art during the second half of the 19th
century. He helped organize the New York Etching Club and was the club's liaison
to the Painters-Etchers Society of London; he also founded the American
Watercolor Society and taught classes at the National Academy of Design, New
York, during the 1860s and 1890s.
As founder of the American Watercolor Society, he was instrumental in the
organization of the Society's annual exhibitions in New York. Several works produced
by contributing artists to the Society's twelfth annual exhibition—including Winslow
Homer and John La Farge—form a part of the Smillie collection in this catalogue.
Smillie shared a studio with his brother George in New York until his death on
September 14, 1909.
WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF
AMERICAN ARTIST JAMES D. SMILLIE
LOTS 8-16
