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Lot Essay
The picture shows Christ preaching to the multitudes from a ship, beginning his sermon with the parable of the sower as described in St Matthew's Gospel, chapter 13, and St Mark's, chapter 4.
Smetham was born in Yorkshire into a middle-class Methodist family, and remained a devout Methodist throughout his life. He moved to London in 1843, marrying and settling in Stoke Newington in the 1850s. He was on close terms with many of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, notably Ruskin, whom he met at the Working Men’s College in 1854, and D.G. Rossetti, in whose studio he painted weekly from 1863 to 1868. Like Rossetti, he also excelled as a poet, and his Letters (1891) and Literary Works (1893), both published posthumously, are rewarding. His paintings, many of them religious in theme, others pastoral or Arcadian, show the influence not only of his Pre-Raphaelite friends and mentors but that of an earlier generation of English artists – Blake, Linnell, Constable and others – to whose work he responded. Although he exhibited a number of works at the Royal Academy, he met with the little artistic success, and this exacerbated the intense depression and mental instability from which he had suffered since youth. A complete breakdown took place in 1877, and he died twelve years later.
Smetham was born in Yorkshire into a middle-class Methodist family, and remained a devout Methodist throughout his life. He moved to London in 1843, marrying and settling in Stoke Newington in the 1850s. He was on close terms with many of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, notably Ruskin, whom he met at the Working Men’s College in 1854, and D.G. Rossetti, in whose studio he painted weekly from 1863 to 1868. Like Rossetti, he also excelled as a poet, and his Letters (1891) and Literary Works (1893), both published posthumously, are rewarding. His paintings, many of them religious in theme, others pastoral or Arcadian, show the influence not only of his Pre-Raphaelite friends and mentors but that of an earlier generation of English artists – Blake, Linnell, Constable and others – to whose work he responded. Although he exhibited a number of works at the Royal Academy, he met with the little artistic success, and this exacerbated the intense depression and mental instability from which he had suffered since youth. A complete breakdown took place in 1877, and he died twelve years later.