George Henry Smillie

"Cathedral Rocks, Yosemite Valley" George Henry Smillie, West, 19th Century

1871

The career of George Smillie followed the arc of nineteenth-century U.S. landscape painting. Trained in the Hudson River School tradition, Smillie successfully adapted to changing U.S. tastes and growing interest in European trends. In the late 1800s, he moved to tonalist paintings full of brushwork and influenced by French Barbizon painting. By the end of his career, he had lightened his palette to produce works similar to those of the U.S. impressionists. Yet in all styles, he was never less than competent, and his tonalist work is among the best produced in the United States. Like many nineteenth-century painters, George Smillie’s artistic training began with the study of printing. His father, James Smillie, was a noted printmaker who engraved Hudson River landscapes. George studied briefly with James McDougal Hart and then opened a studio of his own in New York City. A critic in 1870 said that his realistic landscapes exhibited “a certain refinement” that “enhances the charm of his more quiet scenes.” Smillie spent most of his career in New York City but sketched for several summers in New Hampshire, upstate New York, and Florida. In the early 1870s, George Smillie and his older brother (James Smillie, also an artist) ventured to the western United States to sketch. The trip inspired several paintings of the Rocky Mountains as well as some with Native American scenes observed from real life. On the same trip, the Smillie brothers visited the Yosemite Valley in California. Access was difficult until the national park was established in 1890, and the brothers visited before the area’s features were well-known to European Americans. An oil painting by George Smillie of Half Dome in Yosemite sold for $42,000 in 2006. George Smillie painted both in oils and in watercolor. He embraced a wide range of landscape subjects from quiet Connecticut meadows to rocky Massachusetts coastlines. He particularly liked painting the area around the shores of Long Island. After a tour of Europe, however, George Smillie began painting moody tonalist landscapes with muted colors. He became fascinated with the changeability of the seasons and times of the day. In these works, Smillie often chose a dramatic viewpoint and mysterious lighting to add theatrical excitement to the scene. During the 1890s, Smillie lived in southern Connecticut where he met the major U.S. impressionists. He soon changed his style again, now choosing a lighter palette and even looser brushwork. In 1906, the 66-year-old painter moved for the final time to Pondville Road in Bronxville, NY. He said of the area, “For the landscape painter there is enough to keep him busy here without going far afield for his subjects, and there is always inspiration among our beautiful trees and back lanes and old pastures.”