Marshall Joseph Jr Smith Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1854 - d. 1923

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    • Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (Virginia/Louisiana, 1854-1923), "St. Tammany"
      May. 21, 2023

      Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (Virginia/Louisiana, 1854-1923), "St. Tammany"

      Est: $8,000 - $12,000

      Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (Virginia/Louisiana, 1854-1923) "St. Tammany" oil on canvas signed "MJS, Jr.," and titled on stretcher bar, "Frost & Adams, Boston" canvas stamp and "Bowery & Foster, Picture Frames" label en verso. Period frame. 12" x 15-3/4", framed 16-1/2" x 20-1/4" Provenance: Private collection, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; New Orleans Auction Galleries, December 5, 2020, lot 105. Notes: Marshall J. Smith, Jr. was one of the most talented of the late 19th-century Louisiana landscape painters. A student of Richard Clague, Jr., Smith furthered his studies at the Accademia dei Medici in Rome and the Royal Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Smith, along with fellow pupil William Henry Buck, accompanied Clague into the rural bayous, swamps and fields, often inaccessible by road, to record the landscape and daily life of tenant farmers and fishermen. In the painting "St. Tammany", a woman of color wearing a scarlet tignon leads her cattle homeward toward a small cabin in a clearing of moss-laden live oak trees.

      New Orleans Auction Galleries
    • Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/Louisiana)
      Nov. 20, 2021

      Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/Louisiana)

      Est: $30,000 - $50,000

      Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/Louisiana, 1854-1923) , "Bucolic Louisiana Farmstead with Moss-Draped Live Oaks", oil on canvas, signed lower left, 20 in. x 32 in., framed Provenance: Estates of Louis and Georgia Woodson, Lafayette, LA. Note: Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. was among the most talented and preeminent painters of Louisiana bayou and swamp scenes of the late 19th century. While maintaining a studio in New Orleans, Smith traveled extensively throughout the rural isolated countryside of southern Louisiana, at the time accessible only by boat or horse. Smith's paintings reveal his intimate knowledge of the particulars of life in the rural Acadian communities. By contemporary accounts, Smith was a favorite student of the dean of Louisiana landscape painting, Richard Clague. Upon finishing his studies in art at Virginia's Washington College, Smith returned to New Orleans in 1869 and furthered his studies with Clague in his studio, and later during a Grand Tour of Europe. Smith's sensitive and masterful brushwork, subtle and effective use of color, and his ability to interpret and respond to the landscape in his own personal style made him a highly respected, exhibited and collected artist of his day. Of the three masters of Louisiana landscape paintings, Richard Clague, William Henry Buck and Marshall J. Smith, Jr., Smith was the least prolific. To appease his parents, Smith worked as a clerk and as an agent in his father's insurance company. Additionally, as a founding member of the Krewe of Proteus, he designed their annual Mardi Gras floats and tableaux. Smith's personal time to devote to traveling and painting his alluring and evocative Louisiana landscapes was limited, making his paintings particularly rare on the market today. In the large canvas offered here, Smith’s complex composition centers around an imposing moss-laden live oak tree which anchors a farmstead with barn and distant structures. The tree provides shade for the cows resting beneath it, while a companion cow is being tended by a girl in the foreground in a charming vignette with figure, trough and animal. The low horizon line provides space for an expansive sky with floating wispy clouds above the open fields. The combination of the rarity of Smith paintings, clear artistic expertise in brushwork, nostalgic historical quality of rural southern Louisiana life, as well as the magnitude in scale of “Bucolic Louisiana Farmstead with Moss-Draped Live Oaks” contribute to the importance and significance of this exceptional offering. Ref.: Poesch, Jessie. "Growth and Development of the Old South, 1830-1900." Painting in the South: 1564-1980. Richmond: Virginia Museum, 1983; Bacot, H. Parrott. Louisiana Art from the Roger Houston Ogden Collection. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1992; Pennington, Estill Curtis. Look Away: Reality and Sentiment in Southern Art. Atlanta: Peachtree Publishers, 2000

      Neal Auction Company
    • Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/Louisiana, 1854-1923), "St. Tammany Plantation"
      Dec. 05, 2020

      Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/Louisiana, 1854-1923), "St. Tammany Plantation"

      Est: $8,000 - $12,000

      Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/Louisiana, 1854-1923) "St. Tammany Plantation" oil on canvas indistinctly monogrammed lower left, stretcher monogrammed "MJS, Jr." and localized "St. Tammany", canvas with "Frost & Adam" supplier's label en verso. Framed. 12" x 15-3/4", framed 16-1/2" x 20-1/4" Provenance: Purchased New Orleans gallery, ca. 1960, thence by descent. Notes: Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr., one of the most talented 19th century landscape artists of southern Louisiana, trained under Adolphe Jacquet, then Richard Clague, Jr.- the city of New Orleans' foremost landscape painter. Smith, along with fellow pupil William H. Buck, accompanied Clague into the rural bayous, swamps and fields, often inaccessible by road, to record the landscape and daily life of tenant farmers and fishermen. Their broad expanses with low horizons, executed through plein-air lighting, and keen attention to detail, redefined French Barbizon painting in a distinct Southern American-style called the Bayou School. Following in the path of his mentor, Smith studied abroad, particularly in Clague's native France, returning to the United States in 1876 and to New Orleans in 1877/1878, just before Clague prematurely died. Upon his death, Smith inherited Clague's sketchbooks and his legacy- recreating and painting anew Clague's sketches from both draft and in situ, often frequenting his favorite locales in St. Tammany Parish along the banks of Lake Ponchartrain and the Tchefuncte River. Smith founded the Southern Art Union in 1880 and the Proteus Carnival Organization in 1882 to further advocate the landscape genre of the Bayou School. Marshall J. Smith, Jr.'s landscapes of daily life of innocuous flora and fauna, much like the sketch offered here are as rich in tradition as are the families and parades through which they have passed. This work, likely executed on his return (given the Boston canvas supplier stamp), is an homage to the late Clague- in stagnant heat of the setting hours of daylight, a woman of color with a scarlet tignon, leads her cattle homeward toward a small cabin in a clearing of Live Oaks laden in moss. A diminutive scene on a diminutive scale aggrandized by the immense horizon and dominion of the land recalls so many other Smith shanties like "Uncle Toby's Cabin" that graced Griswold's show window in April of 1877: "The rude and rustic habitation [offset]….in the distance is an oak tree remarkable for the truthfulness of color and the and the river view is really striking as a study of perspective"- New Orleans Daily Democrat 30 April 1877, p.8

      New Orleans Auction Galleries
    • Marshall Joseph Smith, Jnr. (1854-1923) Lake Pontchartrain Farm oil on canvas 13 x 25 ½ in. (33 x 64.8 cm.)
      Jan. 19, 2017

      Marshall Joseph Smith, Jnr. (1854-1923) Lake Pontchartrain Farm oil on canvas 13 x 25 ½ in. (33 x 64.8 cm.)

      Est: $20,000 - $30,000

      MARSHALL JOSEPH SMITH JR. (1854-1923) Lake Pontchartrain Farm oil on canvas 13 x 25.5 in. (33 x 64.8 cm.)

      Christie's
    • Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/New Orleans)
      Sep. 12, 2015

      Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/New Orleans)

      Est: $10,000 - $15,000

      Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/New Orleans, 1854-1923), "Tuscan Terrace" and "Lakeside Villa", 1875, 2 oils on canvas affixed to boards, both signed, dated and inscribed "Roma" lower right, 10 3/4 in. x 17 1/4 in. and 11 1/2 in. x 17 1/2 in., matching period frames ; accompanied by vintage albumen photograph of Marshall J. Smith, Jr., unknown photographer, 14 in. x 11 in., unframed, (3 pcs.) Provenance: Family of the artist Note: The two canvases offered here represent a brief but important moment in the career of Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. Born in Norfolk, VA, Smith spent most of his early life in New Orleans and took his first art lessons from Adolphe Jacquet in 1866. In 1870, he became a pupil of Richard Clague, the city’s foremost landscape painter, who is credited as Smith’s greatest artistic influence. Following Clague’s death in 1873, Smith left New Orleans to travel Europe and study in Rome, where he completed the landscapes offered here. Inspired by his travels throughout Italy, each canvas reflects the technical expertise in composition that Smith undoubtedly learned from Clague, as well as highlights the artist’s skill in depicting water and foliage that can be seen in his famous Louisiana bayou scenes. Ref.: Louisiana Landscape and Genre Paintings of the 19th Century. Shreveport: The R.W. Norton Art Gallery, 1981.

      Neal Auction Company
    • Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/New Orleans)
      Sep. 12, 2015

      Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/New Orleans)

      Est: $15,000 - $25,000

      Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr. (American/New Orleans, 1854-1923), "Sunrise" and "Rising Moon", 1879, each oil on canvas affixed to boards, both initialed "M.J.S. Jr" and dated lower right, both titled lower center, 7 in. x 5 in., framed alike. (2 pcs.) Provenance: Family of the artist; by descent

      Neal Auction Company
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