Joseph Lindon Smith

Joseph Lindon Smith (1863–1950), was an American painter, best known for his extraordinarily faithful and lively representations of antiquities, especially Egyptian tomb reliefs. He was a founding member of the art colony at Dublin, NH. His works are scattered among many collections, but museums with significant holdings include the Fitchburg Art Museum, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Fogg Art Museum.

Smith was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on October 11, 1863, and was schooled in Boston at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and in Paris (1883–85) at the Académie Francaise under William Bougereau, Jules Joseph Lefebvre, and Gustave Boulanger. He spent several years traveling in Greece and Italy, often in company with his friend, the American painter Frank W. Benson, who painted a memorable portrait of the young Smith (1884); while in Venice on one of these excursions, Smith met Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), who became a lifelong friend and supporter. [Joseph Lindon Smith, "Tombs, Temples, and Ancient Art" (Norman, OK, 1956), Corinna Lindon Smith, ed.] ["Joseph Lindon Smith: Paintings from Egypt", exh. cat. (Brown University Department of Egyptology, Providence, RI, October 8–November 21, 1998).]

In 1898, Smith decided on a whim to visit Egypt. His paintings of Nile scenes and antiquities quickly brought him to the attention of Phoebe Hearst, who was underwriting excavations at Giza for the University of California, and Dr. George Andrew Reisner, the director of the expedition who was later to become a professor of Egyptology at Harvard University and curator of the Egyptian collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Reisner and other archaeologists enlisted Smith to document the fragile wall paintings in tombs that were just then coming to light.

Smith married Corinna Putnam in 1899, and for decades they spent the winter months in Egypt or Latin America and the summer months in Dublin NH, on the shores of Dublin Pond. Their house at Loon Point formed an important nucleus of the Dublin Art Colony, whose regular members included the painters Abbott Thayer and Rockwell Kent, publishers Charles Scribner and Henry Holt and whose visitors included Isabella Stewart Gardner, poet Amy Lowell, Mark Twain, and painter John Singer Sargent. ["Circle of Friends: Art Colonies of Cornish and Dublin", exh. cat. (Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery, Keene State College, Keene, NH, 1985).] Smith was noted in the community for his love of theatricals, and part of his Loon Point property was landscaped and decorated for these performances.

His memoir, "Tombs, Temples, and Ancient Art", was published after his death, on October 19, 1950. Edited by his wife, Corinna, the book is a riveting, first-hand account of the excavations at Giza and in the Valley of the Kings in their greatest period of discovery (1899–1950). Smith was often among the first to enter a newly discovered tomb and knew most of the personalities at work in the area, including Lord George Carnarvon, Howard Carter, Gaston Maspero, and Theodore M. Davis. In many cases, his paintings are the best surviving documentation of newly exposed, fragile antiquities, whose polychromy did not long survive the change of atmosphere.

Corinna Lindon Smith wrote a lively personal memoir, "Interesting People: Eighty Years with the Great and Nearly Great", which is an important source of material on the movers and shakers of her day, especially writers and publishers. [Corinna Lindon Smith, "Interesting People: Eighty Years with the Great and Near-Great" (Norman, OK, 1962).]

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