User:Oldhousemuseum/sandbox/Thomas Smith of Derby

'''Thomas Smith of Derby, 1721 - 1767. Pioneer of the Picturesque'''

Until the early 18th Century the landscapes of Italy and the Low Countries were better known in Britain than its own amazing variations of scenery. Aristocratic patrons who had been on the Grand Tour brought back foreign paintings and employed foreign artists to portray their country seats and surrounding estates in the Flemish or Italian manner.

Thomas Smith was one of the earliest English artists to move beyond topographical prospects and capture the wonders of the natural English landscape. Self taught as a painter, he was instructed as an engraver by the celebrated London Huguenot, François Vivares. Smith was the first to record the wild regions of the Peak District as was among the earliest artists to paint in Avon Gorge at Bristol to the River Tees and Tyne and from Newmarket Heath to the Lake District.

His paintings, widely disseminated in folios of prints, inspired as well as recorded the new creations of English parks and gardens, where features incorporating rocks, caves and cascades were being introduced. In two views of the ironworks at Coalbrookdalehe showed how the early industrial revolution could be associated with the rural picturesque scene.

Often accompanied by Vivares, Smith was the first English artist to embark on regular painting tours, which were the sources for his engravings, some of which ran into various editions. The chronology of his work is here based on the first editions of his folio; he seldom signed or dated his paintings. Some of his prospects anticipate William Gilpin's ideas on the picturesque and those of Edmunde Burke on the 'beautiful' and the 'sublime'. The Gentlemans Magazine and other contemporary travel journals printed reduced versions of his engravings prompting many later artists like Wright of Derby and Turner to visit locations as well as a growing number of Brithis and Foreign tourists. Although acclaimed by his contemporaries such as George Vertue and Thomas Gray, Smith's reputation faded at the beginning of the nineteenth century, overshadowed by the artistic gains of English Romanticism. He received either a monograph nor an exhibition recording his work.

This book is an attempt to rehabilitate his achievements and includes all his known published prints together with 14 colour reproductions of his paintings.

Thomas Smith of Derby, 1721 - 1767: Pioneer of the Picturesque by Trevor Brighton, is available from the Old House Museum, Bakewell Derbyshire at a cost of £25 which includes postage.

www.oldhousemuseum.org.uk

(207 pages, A4 landscape, 74plates.)