Lot Essay
John Smith, the blind harper, was renowned for his exquisite music-making. A number of noted travellers in Wales wrote of seeing him and hearing him playing until, in 1798, he was recorded as being too ill to play again. He would often play through the night, accompanied by a choir of Welsh peasants. Ibbetson made a number of sketches, some by moonlight, on the spot at Conway, where the tones of Smith's harp were apparently to be heard most perfectly. There is another watercolour of John Smith as the Blind Harper of Conway illustrated in R.M. Clay, Julius Caesar Ibbetson, 1948 (pl.35).