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