Walter Granville Smith
1870–1938

Walter Granville Smith was born on January 28, 1870, in South Granville, New York, near the Adirondack Mountains and the New York-Vermont border. His family soon moved to Newark, New Jersey, where he grew up and attended the Newark Academy. As a teenager he studied at the Art Students League of New York. In 1897 Granville-Smith toured Europe. In Paris he studied at the Académie Julien.

He started his artistic career as a magazine illustrator and is known for his charming genre scenes of young children and women involved in pleasurable activities along the shore, in parks and along city streets.

Not only was he an expert at painting anatomically correct human figures, he was an adept horseman and enjoyed riding, jumping and painting horses in and around Newport, Rhode Island. His illustrations appeared in many late 19th and 20th century publications, including Harper’s, Scribner’s, Century, and Collier’s.

After 1900 Walter Granville Smith focused more on landscape painting. In 1908, he acquired a summer home in Bellport, New York, and the area was a frequent subject of his landscape and seascape paintings and watercolors.

He was a National Academician (1915) with the National Academy of Design and belonged to several art clubs and societies. From 1924 to 1926 he served as president of the Salmagundi Club in New York.

Walter Granville Smith received awards from the National Academy in 1900, 1908, 1927, 1929 and 1933; a medal at the Charleston Exposition (1902); prizes at the American Water Color Society in 1905 and 1916; the Worcester Art Museum (1906); the Art Institute, Chicago (1907); Buenos Aires Exposition (1910), Salmagundi Club (1911, 1913, 1918, 1922, 1925 and 1928). His work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, Butler Art Institute, Toledo Museum (Ohio), New York City’s Salmagundi Club, the National Academy of Design, the Philadelphia Art Club, and elsewhere.

Walter Granville Smith died in Queens, New York, on December 7, 1938.