Background
He was born on November 23, 1807 in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom, the son of David and Elizabeth (Cummins) Smillie. His father was an amateur lapidary and is said to have been an authority on the flora and fauna of the Hebrides.
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He was born on November 23, 1807 in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom, the son of David and Elizabeth (Cummins) Smillie. His father was an amateur lapidary and is said to have been an authority on the flora and fauna of the Hebrides.
James was apprenticed to James Johnston, a silver-engraver, with whom he worked for nearly a year; later he worked for a time with an engraver on steel, Edward Mitchell.
James was apprenticed to James Johnston, a silver-engraver, with whom he worked for nearly a year; later he worked for a time with an engraver on steel, Edward Mitchell.
In 1821 the Smillie family moved to Quebec, Canada, where the father and an elder brother William, also an engraver, are believed to have carried on a jewelry business. James worked with them as an engraver until 1827, when he went to London and thence to Edinburgh, returning to Quebec only to proceed to New York about 1829. At the outset he had some difficulty in obtaining employment, but Robert Walter Weir and Asher Brown Durand lent him their assistance and influence to such good effect that by 1830 he was settled there permanently as a busy banknote engraver, a pioneer in this work. As opportunity offered, he also engraved on steel the works of some of the leading figure painters and landscapists of the period.
During the early years in New York he was associated with George W. Hatch; among other things they reproduced some views of New York City (1831), after C. Burton, and a plate in one of the annuals, "The Equinoctial Storm, " which William Dunlap considered "of exceeding beauty. "
The first of his line engravings to attract favorable notice was "The Convent Gate". Smillie from time to time contributed line engravings to these flowery publications. He supplied prints after sketches by Thomas Addison Richards for a volume called Georgia Illustrated (1842) and for the American Art Union reproduced "The Dream of Arcadia" after Thomas Cole's painting. Another important plate which elicited much commendation was "The Rocky Mountains, " after one of the big scenic compositions of Albert Bierstadt, which was famous in its day (1864).
After 1861 he should have devoted all his time to engraving banknote vignettes, with the exception of 1864, when he was working on the Bierstadt. He died at Poughkeepsie, New York.
James Smillie was outstanding among engravers of landscape, a pioneer in banknote engraver. His most famous reproductive plates are "Dover Plains", "Evening in the New York Highlands", "The Bay and Harbor of New York", "Mount Washington from Conway Valley". But the most important undertaking of all was his series of large plates after the "Voyage of Life", a set of four allegorical paintings that met with great popularity.
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He was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in 1851, one of the few engravers to have won that distinction.
He married Katharine Van Valkenbergh of New York in 1832. Three of their sons, James David, George Henry, and William Main, following in their father's footsteps, became engravers of note.
