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Matthew Smith, English, 1879-1959
Title: A Cornish Landscape
Date: 1920
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
50 x 60 cm
Signed: lower left: M S
Credit Line: Bequeathed, 1945
Object Number: NGI.1123
ProvenanceBequeathed, Miss Mary Olivia Kennedy, 1945
Label TextSmith painted boldly coloured landscapes, nudes, and still-lifes inspired by the Nabis and the Fauves. Roderic O’Conor was a close friend and an important influence on his work. In 1917, Smith was injured at the Battle of Passchendaele and he suffered poor mental and physical health thereafter. This landscape is one of a group that he painted at St Columb Major, Cornwall, during the autumn and winter of 1920. Enclosed and unpeopled, these landscapes are characterised by heightened non-naturalistic colouring. It has been suggested that they reflect the artist’s psychological trauma in the aftermath of the war.