Smith, James

Introduction:

Smith is known only from his three trade labels. Although these suggest that he enjoyed a long career, it seems likely that Smith was primarily a portraitist who painted a few silhouettes over a short period.

Smith’s Trade Label No. 1 shows an illustration of a silhouette of a woman in the costume of c1780. His second trade label, however, shows a different address to the former and a miniature in place of a silhouette. Both labels are in the Banks collection at the British Museum. Trade Label No. 3 shows neither a silhouette nor a miniature, but Smith continued to use it for about twenty-five years after he had ceased to use No. 1. These trade labels tell us that he also worked as a portrait painter and miniaturist, a copier of portraits, landscapes and historical paintings, and, according to Trade Label No.3, a ‘carver, gilder and frame-maker’. A total of twenty-eight exhibits, many of them crayon portraits, were sent in to the Society of Artists and the Royal Academy by the same man between 1773-89, suggesting that James Smith was foremost a portraitist.

Since other silhouette artists illustrated their trade labels with profiles that were similar in style to their own work, we can assume that Smith’s silhouette work took the form of plain black profiles painted on card or paper. Silhouettes painted on glass and plaster were not much in fashion at the period in which he was active. However, no examples of his silhouette work are currently known to verify this assumption.