James David Smillie (January 16, 1833 – September 15, 1909) was an American artist, cofounder of the American Watercolor Society and

New York Etching Club The New York Etching Club, formally New York Etchers Club, was one of the earliest professional organization in America devoted to the medium of etching. Its founders were inspired by the Etching revival that had blossomed in France and England in ...

. His brother was painter George Henry Smillie.

Biography

James David Smillie was born in New York City on January 16, 1833. His father, (1807–1885), a Scottish engraver, emigrated to New York in 1829, was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1851, did much, with his brother William Cumming (1813–1908), to develop the engraving of bank-notes, and was an excellent landscape-engraver. The son studied with him and in the National Academy of Design; engraved on steel vignettes for bank-notes and some illustrations, notably F. O. C. Darley's pictures for

James Fenimore Cooper James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century, whose historical romances depicting colonist and Indigenous characters from the 17th to the 19th centuries brought h ...

's novels; was elected an associate of the National Academy in 1865—the year after he first began painting—and an academician in 1876; and was a founder (1866) of the American Water Color Society, of which he was treasurer in 1866–73 and president in 1873–78, and of the

. He married Anna C. Cook in 1881. Among his paintings, in oils, are ''Evening among the Sierras'' (1876) and ''The Cliffs of Normandy'' (1885), and in water colour, ''A Scrub Race'' (1876) and ''The Passing Herd'' (1888). He wrote and illustrated the article on the

Yosemite Yosemite National Park ( ) is an American national park in California, surrounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers an ar ...

in ''Picturesque America''. A portrait of Smillie by

Henry Augustus Loop Henry Augustus Loop (1831–1895) was an American painter. Biography Henry Augustus Loop was born in Hillsdale, New York on September 9, 1831. He was educated in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and studied with Henry Peters Gray in New York ...

is in the collection of the National Academy of Design, as is another by James Hamilton Shegogue. His brother, George Henry Smillie, was also a painter. James David Smillie died at his home in New York on September 15, 1909.

References

External links

James D. Smillie Papers
at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario {{DEFAULTSORT:Smillie, James David 1833 births 1909 deaths 19th-century American painters 19th-century American male artists American male painters 20th-century American painters American landscape painters Painters from New York City American people of Scottish descent National Academy of Design alumni National Academy of Design members 20th-century American male artists