Robert Catterson Smith
A lifelong friend of both William Morris and Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Robert Catterson Smith became the Headmaster of the Birmingham School of Art during the peak of its reputation as one of the world's leading Arts & Crafts centers.
Born in Dublin, he was the son of the Irish Portrait painter Stephen Catterson-Smith and the miniaturist, Anne Wyke. He became the president of the Royal Hibernian Academy and Director of the National Gallery of Ireland. In 1892 he left Ireland to work for the renowned Kelmscott press in Chiswick, London. It was here that he met William Morris and Burne-Jones, working directly with the latter on the famous Kelmscott 'Chaucer'. Georgiana Burne-Jones wrote in 1902: it was he who, under my husband's own eye, translated almost all the designs for the Kelmscott Chaucer from pencil into ink before they were engraved, and in much doing he learnt most intimately the manner and meaning of the Artist.
He arrived in Birmingham in 1901 with references from Kelmscott and the potter William de Morgan and the illustrator Walter Crane. During his time as Headmaster of the school, he always remained true to his Arts and Crafts ideals. He set a School of Printing and a School of House Painters, for it seemed to him that the craftsmen should be a live artist, if art was to be successfully applied to industrial requirements. In 1922 he published a book 'Drawing from Memory and Mind Picturing' which stressed that the greatest art grew as a development from mental conception: observation, memory and experiment.
Catterson-Smith was above all an artist and craftsman in his own right. A metal worker, sculptor and jewelry designer. He worked with Joseph Southall, Gaskin and Gere to revive egg tempera painting in the early 20th century British Art and 'In the Bosom of a Leafy World' is arguably his most important accomplishment in tempera.
He has works in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and has been exhibited at Manchester City Art Gallery, Royal Academy, Royal Hibernian Academy as well as the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour and Suffolk Street Galleries.
Click on one of the images below for more information.
Displaying 1 to 1 (of 1 artwork)
Displaying 1 to 1 (of 1 artwork)