Joseph Lindon Smith, a one-time member of the Monadnock Artists’ Colony, may be best known for his depiction of Egyptian art. But Amos Fortune Forum speaker Christine Guth spoke about a lesser-known aspect of his career: his work in Japan.
Guth, who was Friday’s Amos Fortune speaker, titled her talk “Joseph Lindon Smith: Dublin’s Peripatetic Painter” and spoke about Smith’s contributions to American museums, particularly his depictions of Japanese sculptures and temples from extended visits to the country in 1901 and 1910.
Guth holds a doctorate in Japanese art history from Harvard, and has held teaching positions at Harvard, Princeton, New York University, Berkeley, Stanford and the Royal College of Art in London. She is working on a book about Joseph Lindon Smith’s activities in Japan.
Smith, who built a home on the south shore of Dublin Lake, was a well-known Dublin artist and many of his paintings were of monuments in Egypt and the Middle East. But Guth’s talk focused on what she called a “tiny moment in his very long career”: his visit to Japan.
His trip is described in his diaries, which are unpublished but are part of the Dublin Historical Society archives. They describe his work capturing images of Buddhist sculptures and temple interiors.
Newspapers of the day report Smith took those travels on behalf of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, an arrangement that Guth says was likely fairly informal. But she said Japanese art was something Americans were interested in at the time, after getting a taste of it at an exceedingly popular exhibit at a Philadelphia museum.
What was missing from American exhibits of Japanese artwork, however, was sculpture, particularly high-grade sculpture. The kind that Smith went to Japan to paint were often still installed in temples, as objects of worship.
Guth said the idea that museums were hungry for depictions of statues may seem unrealistic to modern sensibilities, but at the time, it was not unusual for museums to feature more plaster casts than actual sculptures, or feature engravings rather than original paintings.
Smith’s style “dignified” the artworks, painting them as they were and featuring the age, weathering, and repairs visible on the originals, said Guth, and his work succeeded in becoming artwork in its own right.
The final Amos Fortune Forum this summer will be Aug. 21 at 7 p.m. at the Jaffrey Meetinghouse. Tom Smith and Cosy Sheridan will speak on “Two Songwriters at the Kitchen Table.”
The Amos Fortune Forum is free and the public is welcome.