The Days of Noah, 1860

ink on paper

James Smetham - The Eve of St Agnes 1858

Pen and ink and watercolour on paper

From early on in his career Smetham was an admirer of Blake and his work. Smetham's deep sympathy for the artist revealed itself in a long and perceptive article about Blake which he published in 1869. In the eyes of his friend D.G Rossetti, the intensity of Smetham's vision and his highly individual inventiveness was akin to Blake's. This drawing illustrates a passage from John Keats's poem 'The Eve of St Agnes' which was published in 1820. Madeline, with her lover Porphyro, is fleeing by night from that 'mansion foul' which is her home. This is probably a sketch for a picture which Smetham exhibited in Liverpool in 1859.

James Smetham

[Hugh Miller 1860]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Smetham



[The Days of Noah 1860]



[The Lord of the Sabbath 1861]



[Forsake Not the Law of Thy Mother]

James Smetham - Naboth in his Vineyard 1856

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=13478&searchid=16966

James Smetham - Saul Hiding among the Stuff, 1866

James Smetham - A wayfarer resting by a lake

signed and dated 'J. Smetham. 1865' (lower left)
pencil, pen and brown ink and watercolour heightened with white, and with scratching out on paper
4 7/8 x 6¾ in.

Smetham is one of the most exciting associates of The Pre-Raphaelites. The son of a Wesleyan minister, he was inspired to be an artist by meeting Peter de Wint while living in Lincolnshire and his enthusiasm later fired by reading Ruskin's Modern Painters. He met Ruskin and Rossetti in 1854, however he rejected the pursuit of minute particulars which defined Pre-Raphaelitism; instead he envisaged a magical world suffused with colour. He took his subjects from the Bible, literature and fable, sometimes adopting a Symbolist bent.

James Smetham - The Three Marys at the Crucifixion

Colored pencil and chalk on toned paper
26 x 35 inches

James Smetham was, like his friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his hero William Blake, both a painter and writer. His paintings, which number over four hundred, ranged from portraits to Biblical interpretations to arcadian vignettes and landscapes. This prolific painter, somewhat neglected today, counted among his his Pre-Raphaelite associates Dante Gabriel Rossetti (with whom he collaborated), John Ruskin (who encouraged and advised him), Ford Madox Brown and Frederic James Shields. A mystical figure with a deeply religious bent, Smetham remains one of the most intriguing figures of the Victorian period.

http://www.robertsimon.com/

(for sale)