Painter's Pilgrimage

When Matthew Smith announced that he wanted to be a painter, his father was appalled. A straitlaced manufacturer who wanted Matthew in the family's wire-making business, old Mr. Smith finally gave in, on one condition: his son was not to paint any nudes. Matthew Smith thereupon proceeded to paint more and better nudes than anyone else in Britain. Painter Smith, now 73, has long been considered by a circle of admirers, including famed Augustus John, as Britain's best contemporary artist. Last week Smith was honored by one of the Tate Gallery's rare one-man shows.

Fauvist Flirt. The exhibition, including 81 of Smith's canvases, made the Tate's chaste interior glow with great, lush rainbows of booming reds, silken greens, electric blues. Discerning visitors could trace Smith's artistic pilgrimage from a cautiously academic early Self-Portrait, through his flirtation with Parisian Fauvism. on to his brooding, haunted landscapes of Cornwall and finally the time (about 1924) when he stopped searching, and his work seemed to explode with life and assurance.

The Tate shows canvas after canvas filled with fine still lifes and sensuous nudes stretched out on couches. His nudes glow with warm reds, swirl with rich curves and rumpled hair; sometimes they are asleep, but often they gaze out at the world with impudent eyes and pouting lips. Usually there is a chemise indolently shrugged half off. "I like a bit of drapery," says Smith dreamily. "They always seem more nude that way." Then he adds: "I always liked big girls--they have much more flowing lines, and I went in for curves. I suppose I might make something of a slim woman now, with more experience." Writes Novelist Henry Green in the catalogue: "In his nudes, those flaunting women so often stare us in the face with what seems to be contempt for the effect their chests may have on us ... There is a sureness about these women which carries over to us that utter serenity which only great painting can impose."

Certain Strokes. A man as gentle and frail as his work is ebullient, Matthew Smith has been painting less sure in recent years. And for a while, there was a striking change in his style: the lines seemed to become wider, coarser, the objects on his canvases blurred and bloated. The explanation, says Matthew Smith, "is that I found I was very slowly and carefully going blind."

By last year, he was almost totally blind, able to see only the heaviest brush strokes, often leaving spots of canvas bare of paint. Last January Smith had an operation for cataracts, and now his sight has returned. "It was incredible," he says, "to see things I hadn't seen for years, to see birds hopping about in the trees." One eye is still poor, but Smith is painting again vigorously in his modern Chelsea flat (his pictures sell for $1,000 to $3,000 apiece.)

It is a lonely life. His two sons were killed in World War II, and his wife lives in the country. Mornings, he putters about "doing the things that have to be done"--sending out laundry, answering letters and the telephone. Afternoons, he paints with the same old sureness of line, every stroke certain and in place. The work goes slowly, but Matthew Smith does not let himself worry about that. Says he: "You have to think about what you've done by the end of the year--not at the end of the week or the day. If you think about that, you get panic-stricken."

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