Marshall Joseph Smith Jr.
Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr., a landscape and genre painter, is also credited as the founder the carnival organization Proteus, for which he designed parades and tableaux.
Courtesy of Roger H. Ogden Collection.
Following the tradition of atmospheric landscape painting established by his teacher, Richard Clague, in 1880 Marshall Joseph Smith Jr. painted "Gulf Coast with Cypress Grove."
Often misidentified as a New Orleans native, Norfolk, Virginia-born Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr., arrived in the city as a child after the Civil War in 1866, where he received his first art lessons from Adolphe Jacquet. Four years later, Smith became an understudy of leading Louisiana landscape artist Richard Clague, Jr., who instilled in Smith a keen observation and appreciation of the region’s Spanish moss-draped swamps, shanties, and fishermen that mark Smith’s best works. Following Clague’s 1878 death, Smith journeyed through Europe, studying in Rome and other artistic hubs, an influence revealed in his signature veils of subtle color that convey atmosphere. Upon his return, Smith began to utilize his palette knife and minute brushstrokes to capture decay in a South ruined by war.
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Courtesy of the Roger Ogden Collection and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. All rights reserved.
* The Louisiana Endowment has included this work in KnowLouisiana for the purposes of criticism, comment, teaching, scholarship, educational research, all other nonprofit educational usages under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act.
