Portrait of James Smillie

 

James David Smillie

  1833 - 1909 (biography)

1901  

etching, printed chine colle 

6 13/16 x 4 3/4"  

pencil, lr 

proof from artist's collection 

J.D.S. imp., ll; Apr. 1901, lr 

W94 

china paper on a heavy white wove support 

1/1 

 

BC186 

SOLD

From Withoftt (NYPL #88): "...he took out two portraits of his father as a young man and used them as the basis for two etchings (See Cat. No. 95; for a portrait of Smillie at a later age, see Cat. no. 108.) Cat. Nos. 94 and 95 were destined to illustrate a project never completed, the publication of an expurgated version of James Smillie's autobiography, "A Pilgrimage." JDS read the manuscript to a typist, leaving out passages as he considered too personal, but even the edited version led to objections from other members of the family and no arrangement to publish the work was ever made. (Manuscript, Millie family; edited typescript, Archives of American Art.) This etching is based on an outline pencil sketch made by Robert Hinshelwood with the aid of a camera lucida, worked on by James Smillie himself, and finished by James David in 1866. (Diary, Nov. 23, 1866). It depicts the engraver standing by the pig pen with a pail in hand, a scene from the short period when he owned a farm in Poughkeepsie. Hinshelwood, trained in engraving in Scotland, had come to American to work with James Smillie (Sr.) in 1832. Two years later he married the engraver's sister Margaret. The men were partners for some years in the 1840s but later quarrelled vigorously. Hinshelwood was a competent engraver with no artistic ambitions, and not much of a draughtsman--hence the subject of this drawing went over his partner's work. The drawing depicts James Smillie at 35. The etching was begun March 25, 1901, and printed April 4. Smillie also looked at an oil sketch of his father painted by Robert Weir in 1830 (unlocated)."