Charles William Smith, author, painter, printmaker and educator, was born in Lofton, Virginia on 22 June 1893. He was raised and attended schools in Waynesboro, Virginia. He later studied with Alon Bement at the University of Virginia summer school in 1911 and the following year he was enrolled at the Corcoran Art School. In 1915 he began a course of study at Yale University's School of Fine Arts and, after receiving a certificate for three years of work, Smith was drafted and entered World War I as a 2^nd Lieutenant in Field Artillery.

After the war, Smith returned to Waynesboro and established himself as a graphic artist. He freelanced in advertising, illustration and book design, set up a private press, and issued his first book in 1925. That same year he moved to Richmond, Virginia where he worked as an artist for Whittet & Shepperson, a local printing firm. In 1929 he taught art at the Richmond Division of the College of William and Mary. Smith became chair of the art department at Bennington College in Vermont in 1936 where he taught until 1947. He moved back to Virginia and taught at the University of Virginia from 1947 until his retirement in 1963 and was the first chairman of the art department.

Smith learned how to use gouges and chisels from his father, a patternmaker for local industries. Early in his career he turned to linoleum block printing. He explained in his 1926 book, “Linoleum Block Printing,” that the basic techniques for linoleum block and wood block were similar. The artist transferred his design to the block and then cut the design in relief. Areas not to be printed were cut away. The difference lay in the inability of the linoleum to permit fine lines or much detail. Linoleum blocks produced prints with large areas of color and minimal lines.

Smith also was an accomplished book designer. His books include “Linoleum Block Printing,” “Old Virginia in Block Prints,” “Old Charleston” [chosen as one of fifty books of the year for 1934], “The University of Virginia, “Blowing Bubbles,” “Abstractions,“ and “Experiments in Relief Print Making.”  Smith created a method of block painting to explore abstract forms. He published two books of his block paintings, “Animal Fare” and “My Zoological Garden.”

Solo exhibitions of Smith’s work were mounted at the Montclair Art Museum; Bennington College; Gallery of Fine Arts, Yale University; Art Institute of Chicago; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Detroit Institute of Arts; Akron Art Institute; High Museum; and the San Francisco Museum of Art. His works are represented in the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Charles William Smith died in Charlottesville in March of 1987.