Pyrographic Portrait Of A Merchant And His Partner

Pyrographic picture by the artist Joseph Smith after the original work done around 1515 by the Flemish artist Quentin Massys.

Within the original, although re-finished, frame. o.s:16.5 in x 20 in The reverse of the sycamore (?) panel bears the incised signature of the artist 'Smith, Pyrographist 1822'.

Joseph Smith is a rather elusive yet prolific artist, his works usually signed and dated between 1810 and 1824. The Pinto Collection at the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery holds a full-length portrait by Smith done in 1810, of John Jeffreys, after the original painting by Hoppner. A native of Craven in Yorkshire, his incised motif of the ‘all seeing eye’ with his name and address record him as working from 4 Medcalf Place, Pentonville, London, in 1821 and at other times Skipton or Skipton Castle, Yorkshire.

Chris Coles, researcher and BADA Recommended Service Provider, has recently sent us a court report for 1825, the year after Smith’s last dated work, (according to the British Museum). Under the heading ‘Talent Neglected’ we learn that Joseph Smith was living in London at this time in ‘reduced circumstances’ and was charged with unlawfully pawning two of his own works, sold previously to a William James Berry, and was unable to redeem them in order to restore them to the customer. At the hearing, Smith himself professed that his art was an unproductive one, ‘because it was little understood’. Credited with ‘any merit in the invention’, which ‘was entirely his own’, he was awarded a Gold Medal from the Royal Society of Arts ‘as a reward for his ingenuity’ yet ‘had been unable to obtain a livelihood by the exercise of the profession itself’. At the hearing, Mr. Berry states that Smith excelled in his art, the engraving performed with 'steel pencils heated to various temperatures producing a rich variety of shade, which being placed alternatively in basso or alto relievo, produces a most striking and singularly pleasing effect.' Clearly a talented family, at the time of his father’s hearing, Smith’s son is recorded as exhibiting paintings for sale at the Royal Academy.