Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Papers of Charles William Smith, Accession #5791-a, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The collection was a gift of Mr. Charles W. Smith of Charlottesville on 13 December 1978.

Scope and Content Information

This collection consists of ca. 137 items, 1910-1978, papers of Charles William Smith, artist and professor emeritus of art at the University of Virginia. Smith was born in Lofton, Virginia, in 1893. He attended summer art courses at the University of Virginia in 1911 and later became an art student at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and at the Yale School of Fine Arts, returning to the University of Virginia each year to teach in the summer session. Following the first World War, he pursued a career as a graphic artist, first in Waynesboro, Virginia, and then in New York City, making woodblock prints for book illustrations and advertisements, publishing books of his blockprints, and a book about linoleum print making, and all the while continuing with his painting and drawing. In 1936 he left New York to teach at Bennington College in Vermont, where he developed his technique of making "block paintings," as he called them, using movable blocks of wood and linoleum and strips of metal to print the abstract and geometric shapes which formed his compositions. Each impression was made separately, and each painting was therefore unique. Smith taught at the University of Virginia from 1948-1963, and was head of the art department for the last eleven years of his tenure.

Included in the collection are letters from artists such as Charles Dana Gibson, Maxfield Parrish, Vasili Kandinsky, Reginald Marsh, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Dard Hunter, Fred O. Seibel, Rudolph Rusicka, and Jean Helion, as well as prominent art world figures Herbert Read, Lewis Mumford, Elmer Adler, Baroness Hilda Rebay, and Leslie Cheek. Many of the business letters are from organizations such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and from art institutions such as the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Personal material from Smith's war career can also be found in the collection, as well as newsclippings, certificates and photographs concerning his work as an artist and teacher.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged with the correspondence, divided into personal, business and miscellaneous letters, followed by personal and biographical material, certificates, printed material and photographs. Within each folder items are arranged chronologically.