William Collingwood Smith RWS (1815-1887) was a marine, river and landscape watercolourist, and one of the most industrious figures of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours in the mid-nineteenth century. Elected an Associate on 13 February 1843, he became a full Member in 1849, served as Treasurer from 1854 to 1879, and was a trustee of the Society from 1861 until his death. Across forty-five years he exhibited 681 drawings in the Society’s summer exhibitions, and 369 frames of sketches and studies in the winter.
This note is drawn from J. L. Roget’s History of the Old Water-Colour Society (1891), the fullest contemporary account of the artist.
Early life
He was born in 1815 at Greenwich, where his father, Mr W. Smith, held for many years a post of trust under the Admiralty, and was himself an amateur draughtsman as well as a very good musician. Though destined for an artistic profession from the first, Collingwood Smith was in a great degree self-taught, receiving only occasional instruction from J. D. Harding. By the age of sixteen or seventeen he was already practising as an artist on his own account. His first appearance as an exhibitor was at the Royal Academy in 1836, with an oil painting of the north aisle of Westminster Abbey; he continued to send works to the Academy, the British Institution and the Society of British Artists until he joined the Water-Colour Society. After the early part of his career he painted exclusively in watercolour.
Marine subjects and travels
Probably by reason of the surroundings of his youth, his earliest subjects were nearly all marine, and some aspired to historic rank as battle-pieces of the old school: in 1846, “The French ship ‘Le Vengeur’ sinking” on the glorious 1st of June; in 1849, “Admiral Collingwood breaking the Line at Trafalgar”; and in 1851, an “Attack by English Gun Brigs under the Earl of Dundonald during the Spanish War.”
Thereafter his subjects were chiefly landscape with water, or landscape with architecture, and his localities ranged across Great Britain and the Continent: Scotland, Wales, France, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany, but especially Italy, with important views of the Italian lakes, Venice, Geneva and Rome. He always resided, however, in or near London.
Family
In 1847 he married Louisa, daughter of the late W. Daniel Triquet, by whom he had one son, William Harding Smith, who followed his father’s profession. They lived first at Camberwell, and during the last thirty years of his life at Wyndham Lodge, 13 Brixton Hill. He generally kept a studio in a more central part of London: before February 1860 in Chester Square, and after that date at 15 Cockspur Street, Charing Cross, in one that had been occupied by F. R. Lee, R.A.
Collingwood Smith belongs to the wider Collingwood family of artists: he was a cousin of William Collingwood RWS (1819-1903), and father of W. H. Collingwood Smith (1848-1919), with W. G. Collingwood (1854-1932) completing the four William Collingwoods of the family.
Teacher to a generation
He began to teach early in his career, and at one time had the largest clientele of pupils in London, among families of the nobility and gentry. He instructed some of the most distinguished amateurs of the day, including the late Mr Gambier Parry, and many well-known officers of the military and naval services. Nor was his tuition confined to amateurs: among the Members and Associates of his own Society who had been his pupils were Samuel Read, William Collingwood, Wm. Matthew Hale and W. Eyre Walker, together with J. W. Whymper of the Royal Institute.
Style and method
His water-colour drawings are “marked by breadth of effect, firmness of drawing, and precision of touch, if they sometimes lack qualities of colour and intricacy of form of a more subtle kind.” His handling was free and sketchy in early years, while the works of his later period are painted with much more finish, tone, and atmospheric effect. Latterly he used little or no body colour, painting with transparent pigment over a neutral groundwork of chiaroscuro, thus reverting in system to the practice of the early draughtsmen, with the advantages of improved materials and modern experience.
Rapidity of execution was one of the chief characteristics of his work, especially in sketching, when he would seize at once upon the chief points of light, shade, and colour. His field kit was of the simplest: stool, board, colour-box and brushes were all he took about with him.
The Society man
His zeal in the interests of the Society was long-standing. He was elected Treasurer on 11 June 1854, after the death of Mackenzie, and retained that office until 1879, when he retired. He was also one of the Society’s trustees from 1861 until his death. On the secession of the Artists and Amateurs Society to Prince’s Hall in Piccadilly, he brought forward a scheme for a new association which took shape under his guidance as the Royal Water-Colour Society Art Club; he was its Treasurer and an active manager of its meetings until his death.
Letters: cold mutton and hard beer
His letters show a lively and genial pen. To Mr Jenkins, the Society’s Secretary, in a letter of 29 April 1861, he wrote:
“I have been pulled over the coals for putting a quotation from Byron’s Chilian to a scene in Italy, and being badly off in Poesy, as Longfellow, Barry Cornwall, and Byron’s effusions will not fit my drawing, I have tried a stanza of my own and if it won’t do the cold mutton and hard beer which have formed my supper are alone to blame. The doggerel is enclosed, and if you think it will pass muster for Milton or Rogers, please order its insertion instead of those which now exist to ‘No. 91 Lago d’Orta’…”
His own seven lines began “By the bright Lake of Orta have I stood”, and his wife offered a comic supplement which he begged the Secretary not to use: “Asses, baskets, broken bottles, Lazy monks with naked throttles…” Neither effusion was inserted; the published catalogue kept its original lines to “Lago d’Orta from the Sacro Monte”.
Later years and legacy
Many of his larger drawings were engraved on wood for the Illustrated London News, chiefly views among the Italian and Swiss lakes and mountains. His last work was a view of “Windsor from Datchet”, contributed to the collection of drawings done for the Queen on the occasion of the Jubilee of her reign.
He died on 15 March 1887 at his residence at Brixton Hill, aged seventy-one. His remaining works were sold at Christie’s on 3 and 5 March 1888: 355 lots of his own drawings and sketches, and a collection of 67 water-colour drawings by other artists, 422 lots in all. The highest recorded prices for his drawings were 102l. 18s. for the “Bay of Uri” (Mrs Morrison’s sale, 1884) and 94l. 10s. for “Constantinople and the Golden Horn” (the Fuller sale, 1870).
References
- Roget, J. L., A History of the Old Water-Colour Society (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1891), vol. II, pp. 286-290.
- The Times, 21 March 1887 (obituary notice, cited in Roget’s footnote).
- Collingwood Family of Artists Index (family research notes).