Three Miniature/Squarings housed in an 18th century carved and partially gilded frame.
1. A Young Woman Holding a Finger to Her Lips (with inscriptions): Black and brown ink with watercolour and white highlights on thin paper: 2.7 x 2.8 cm.
2. An Egyptian Goddess: Watercolour with white highlights on off white paper: 4.4 x 2.3 cm.
3. Maria Paulina Kaspa Apr 6 61: Black ink and watercolour with white highlights: 2.5 x 1.8 cm.
Frame: 12.5 x 16 cm.
More watercolours by James Smetham are available on our website.
Provenance: The artist’s family by descent. These drawings were removed from a scrap book of watercolours and drawings belonging to James Smetham. Throughout his life Smetham had suffered from bouts of mental illness but it was in the fall of 1877 that he succumbed to a debilitating attack after which he withdrew from the world, he became delusional and virtually ceased talking. Almost a year had passed since his attack when he received the album compiled by his daughter Edie and her siblings. The album consisted of scraps of his works chosen from various sketch books. After a decade of emotional and psychological anguish, he died on February 5, 1889.
Included in the sale is a transcript of a letter written in 1878 by the artist’s daughter to her mother, with a passage explaining why the cover of the album is black instead of the green her mother requested.
Squaring was a deliberate and engaging act of selection, thought and artistic labour, by which the artist produced small drawings, usually in the margins of books, and then enclosed them in small rectilinear ‘squares’. The majority of squarings was quite tiny in scale, typically the size of a small stamp, and usually rendered in ink. Some were quite finished in detail, while others were sketchy and almost telegraphic. The chief books which Smetham chose to square were the Bible, the Wesleyan Hymn book, some exhibition catalogues, tomes by Shakespeare, Gilchrist’s Life of Blake and Tennyson.
Smetham, James (1821-1889)
James Smetham produced over four hundred paintings during his lifetime. Like his good friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was a major influence on his art, Smetham was a poet as well as a painter. He also wrote criticisms and recorded fascinating details on many celebrated personages of his day. His paintings ranged from portraits to Biblical interpretations, arcadian vignettes and landscapes. Smetham had great hopes and complicated theories about how audiences would understand and buy his art, but he was sadly disappointed with critical response. However, he received praise from some eminent contemporaries like John Ruskin, George Frederick Watts and Dante Gabriel Rossetti who hailed his friends’ paintings as “the flower of modern art”.
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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION please contact Clayton
T: 01597 272 439
M: 07790 208 712Antique Number: SA1134582
Dateline of this antique is 19th Century
Height is 12.5cm (4.9inches)Width is 16cm (6.3inches)Depth is 0cm (0.0inches)
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