THOMAS SMYTHE
Ipswich 1825 - 1906 London
Ref: BZ 112
Horses and ponies outside an inn, with travellers resting; A winter scene with a woodcutter outside a cottage
A pair
Oil on board: 14 x 24 in / 35.6 x 61 cm
Painted circa 1860
Provenance:
Private collection, UK;
Shakespeare, McTurk and Graham, Leicester, 20th September 1973, lot 283 and 284;
Richard Green, London, 1973;
private collection, UK, 1975
Thomas Smythe was a prominent Ipswich painter of rural scenes, landscapes with animals and coastal views. He particularly excelled at winter landscapes. Smythe was born in Ipswich in 1825, the son of an accountant, James Smythe and his wife Sarah. Thomas first worked with his elder brother Edward Robert Smythe (1810-1899), who was also a painter. His work was greatly influenced by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) and he was also an admirer of George Morland (1763-1804), whose favourite haunt, the Old Plough Inn, Kensal Green, he visited and painted in 1898.
Smythe set up a studio independently at Brook Street, Ipswich in 1846, where he made some of his finest works. These included pairs and quartets of paintings which often illustrated the seasons. In 1874, he collaborated with his brother on some engravings for the Fashionable Repository, published annually. In 1876, Smythe visited Cumberland, a trip that inspired many of his subsequent works. He also visited the West Country, the Sussex coast and the Isle of Wight. He moved to London in 1899 but died in Ipswich in 1906. Several of Thomas’s children were artists, notably Ernest William (1874-1950), who emigrated to America and worked for Walt Disney Studios.
Thomas Smythe exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1856 and 1862, and at the Ipswich Fine Art Club between 1878 and 1903. He was awarded a silver medal by the Ipswich Fine Art Club in 1868.
