This biography from the archives of AskArt.com
An
impressionist painter of western landscapes, Jack Wilkinson Smith was born in
Paterson, New Jersey. He had early exposure to artistic expression because his
father was an artist who did decorative work on the Capitol Building in Albany,
New York.
He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and apprenticed to George Gardner
Symons, who later became a well-known landscape painter in California. He worked
for a period in Lexington, Kentucky as a commercial artist and then became a
staff artist for the "Cincinnati Enquirer." In Cincinnati, he studied at the Art
Academy under Frank Duveneck. During the Spanish American War, 1898, he did
front line sketches that brought him national attention.
In 1906, he settled in Alhambra, California, and his studio home was in the area
called "Artists Alley," where his neighbors included artists Frank Tenney
Johnson, Eli Harvey, and in the summers, Norman Rockwell. Smith was a primary
organizer of the Biltmore Salon, where works by local artists were exhibited and
sold.
For his work, he switched from watercolor to oil painting and traveled the state
doing impressionist landscapes. He is renowned for his colorful High Sierra
mountain views, missions, and marine paintings, and is considered one of
California's most important painters. He also painted and exhibited in Arizona,
winning second prize at the Phoenix Expo in 1920 and first prize in 1922. His
work is in the Phoenix Municipal Collection.
He had many prestigious affiliations including the Salmagundi Club of New York,
Academy of Western Painters, and the California Art Club.