Marcella Smith

British 1887 – 1963

Born in East Moseley, Surrey, in 1887 the Marcella Smith’s family moved to America. She studied first at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, and then at Philadelphia School of Design, and returned to Europe to attend Colarossi’s Atelier in Paris, taught by Eugene Delecluse.

Smith first visited St Ives in 1914, and gained her initial success at Royal Academy in 1916 with her work St Ives Harbour. Many of Smith’s works from her early years concentrated on landscapes and townscapes, that she painted from 3 Porthmeor Studios, around 1920. Smith moved to London in 1921 to live in Maida Vale with Dorothea Sharp — the British artist best known for her landscapes and naturalistic studies of children at play — whilst she maintained her St Ives studio. Smith was invited to contribute a painting to Queen Mary’s Doll House (1922).

In the 1930s, Smith concentrated on flower paintings in oil, and increased the size of her canvases. One of these, Peonies, is illustrated in the Falmouth Exhibition Catalogue (1996) and three other titles exhibited were Magnolia Grandiflora, Anemones, and An Arrangement of Herbaceous Cut Flowers, all from private collections.

Smith and Sharp travelled in Europe together, and Smith appears in paintings by Sharp of the South of France, one from 1914 called Marcella Smith at the Beach. They later lived together in St Ives during WWII. Smith acted as a curator for Lanham’s Gallery, organising exhibitions and running the shows. After the split of the St Ives Society of Artists in 1949, she returned to London, but continued to go back and forth between the two. She died in 1963 in St Ives at 1 Piazza Studios.