Jacob Getlar Smith (1898 – October 28, 1958) was an American painter and muralist who worked mostly in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Smith studied at the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...

in New York from 1919 to 1921. In 1929, Smith was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in the field of fine arts, for creative work in painting. Smith's paintings have been exhibited in several galleries, including the Midtown Galleries, New York; the

; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Corcoran Gallery of Art; the

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Maryl ...

; the

John Herron Art Institute Herron School of Art and Design, officially IU Herron School of Art and Design, is a public art school at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is a professional art school and has been accredite ...

; the Fort Wayne Art Museum; the Carnegie Institute; the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

; the

Minneapolis Institute of Arts The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...

; the Ann Arbor Art Association; the Rochester Memorial Art Gallery; the Cincinnati Museum; the

Art Gallery of Toronto The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Beve ...

; the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the l ...

(Ottawa); the Des Moines Association of Fine Arts; the

Kansas City Art Institute The Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) is a private art school in Kansas City, Missouri. The college was founded in 1885 and is an accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and Higher Learning Commission. It has approxi ...

; the City Art Museum of St. Louis; and the Nebraska Art Association. In 1930, Smith was awarded the Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan Prize of 750 dollars for his painting ''Friends'', by the Committee on Painting and Sculpture of the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

. He died at Montefiore Hospital in

The Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

, New York, on October 28, 1958.

Works

Paintings by Smith:
''The Artist's Wife''
(1927), an oil painting in the collection of the

Snow Shovelers (1934), an oil painting in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Murals commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture for the New Deal, in the Federal Building and Post Office, Salisbury, Maryland: ''Salisbury'', ''Stage at Byrd's Inn'' and ''Cotton Patch''

Murals in the Nyack, New York Post Office, 1936
commissioned by the

Treasury Relief Art Project The Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP) was a New Deal arts program that commissioned visual artists to provide artistic decoration for existing Federal buildings during the Great Depression in the United States. A project of the United States De ...

Smith was the author or editor of books and articles on painting, including: * Editor for

Jan Gordon Jan, JaN or JAN may refer to: Acronyms * Jackson, Mississippi (Amtrak station), US, Amtrak station code JAN * Jackson-Evers International Airport, Mississippi, US, IATA code * Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN), a Syrian militant group * Japanese Article Numb ...

's ''A step-ladder to painting'' (New York: Greenberg, c1939) * Watercolor painting for the beginner (New York: Watson-Guptill, 1951) * The watercolors of

Maurice Prendergast Maurice Brazil Prendergast (October 10, 1858 – February 1, 1924) was an American artist who painted in oil and watercolor, and created monotypes. His delicate landscapes and scenes of modern life, characterized by mosaic-like color, are ...

(New York: Watson-Guptill, 1956, published in American artist, volume 20, number 2, February 1956)

References

External links

"Jacob Getlar Smith"
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellows
"Jacob Getlar Smith papers, 1919-1966"
Archives of American Art
"Jacob Getlar Smith"
AskART {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Jacob Getlar 1898 births 1958 deaths 20th-century African-American painters 20th-century American male artists 20th-century American painters American male painters American muralists Treasury Relief Art Project artists