Skip to content

Smith, Jane Stewart

Smith, Jane Stewart
Smith, Jane Stewart
Smith, Jane Stewart
About the artist
Name
Smith, Jane Stewart
Biography
The Edinburgh based artist Jane Stewart Smith was born in 1839. She was a governess and named Jane Eliza James and aged 24 when in 1864, she married an Edinburgh picture framer and dealer, John Stewart Smith, in 1864.

She principally produced scenes of Edinburgh's streets and buildings in oil and watercolour, as well as some portrait and still life work.

Some of her watercolours depicting Edinburgh's Old Town were displayed in an exhibition in Princes Street in 1868. They were recognised even then as a valuable depiction of the city at the time, from its building and architectural details to the objects and activity of life on the streets. She would get up early to paint her street scenes and often found herself working in less salubrious parts of the town.

In 1915, she helped raise money for the Red Cross by organising an exhibition of her paintings of old Edinburgh as well as a large symbolic painting entitled the 'Dawn of Peace'. The Dawn of Peace can now be seen in the library at the Arthur Conan Doyle Centre where the Edinburgh Association of Spiritualists is based.

She was the author of two books, The Grange of St Giles (1898) and Historic Stones and Stories of Bygone Edinburgh (1924).
The Museum of Edinburgh, formerly Huntly House Museum, holds some of her original work. Edinburgh City Libraries hold 30 original watercolours, mostly depicting streets and closes in Edinburgh's Old Town.

Jane Stewart Smith died in 1925.

Visit the Edinburgh Footnotes website for further information on Jane Stewart Smith.
Creator of