(1833–1909)
The eldest son of a family of painters and engravers, James David Smillie was born in New York City in 1833. After attending private school and the University of the City of New York, he began his career as an engraver in his father’s busy studio. He became such an accomplished engraver of banknotes, certificates, and illustrations, that, according to his brother George Henry, he was earning six thousand dollars a year by 1860.[1]
In 1864, Smillie returned from a two-year artistic tour of Europe and gave up the engraving business in order to paint full time. That year he set up a studio with his brother, George, and sent his first landscape, titled On the Bronx, to the National Academy of Design. He continued to be a regular exhibitor at the National Academy until 1898; he became an Associate in 1865, and a full Academician in 1876. His other exhibition venues were the Brooklyn Art Association, Boston Athenaeum, Artists’ Fund Society, the Metropolitan Sanitary Fair, and the Yonkers Sanitary Fair. He painted in many locations around the country, including Maine, Florida, California, and northern Michigan, and he sent his paintings to be shown in such diverse places as Buffalo, Louisville, Pittsburgh, New Haven, Cincinnati, and Chicago.
Smillie was an active and well-liked member of the New York art community. He was a founding member of the American Water Color Society and served as both treasurer and president. Intent upon promoting etching as a fine art, Smillie also helped to found the New York Etching Club. He died in New York in 1909.
[1] Kenneth Myers, The Catskills: Painters, Writers, and Tourists in the Mountains 1820-1895 (Yonkers, New York.: The Hudson River Museum of Westchester, 1987), 182.