In his time he became so well-known that he was mentioned in local guidebooks. George Smart was born in Sussex in 1774. He served as a soldier before setting up as a tailor in the Sussex village of Frant, near Tunbridge Wells, where he seems to have run a successful business making clothing for the local middle-class and their servants and labourers. But it was his sideline as a folk artist that earned him his status as a minor celebrity.
Using fabric remnants and everyday items such as beads, glass, ribbon, lace, leather and foil, Smart created collages of local village life, using the scenes beyond his shop window as inspiration. The pictures were mounted on board, with painted or lithographic backgrounds (paint was also applied directly to the fabric to highlight details) and often with a paper inscription that described the work. Most of his pictures, whilst entirely individual, were made to a standard appearance and it’s thought that he probably used a template and then added the detail, depending on what was available to him. Smart would often date his works on a milestone in the background.
The most popular subjects produced are the characters of Old Bright The Postman and The Goosewoman, both of whom Smart would have seen passing his shop window every day in Frant. The villagers and tourists would also have seen them; buying one of Smart’s pictures was a bit like buying a souvenir poster today. The naïve style always shows the characters in profile and an animal of some description is usually included.
The 1832 edition of Clifford’s Descriptive Guide of Tunbridge Wells notes that: ‘The company from Wells, in their rides through Frant, are agreeably attracted on entering the village by the nouvelle Exhibition of a tailor, who, out of cloth of divers [sic] colours, delineates animals and birds of various description, with a variety of grotesque characters, particularly old Bright, the Postman, many years sweeper of Tunbridge Wells’ Walks, which is considered a good likeness. He has many visitors to inspect this singular collection, who seldom leave his house without becoming purchasers.’ Contemporary prints show Smart’s house in the village with an array of cloth figures displayed on the wall and Smart himself standing in the road, spruiking the occupants of passing carriages with his wares. He even secured the Duke of Sussex as a patron.
Describing himself as ‘Cat manufacturer’ and ‘Artist in cloth and velvet figures’, Smart’s paper inscriptions detailed the picture they were affixed to as well as promoting his business: ‘At Frant there dwells a Man of fame, By trade a Tailor, SMART by name, Whose studies gave me great delight, For life resembled caught my sight…’ After describing the image, it continues: ‘Of Cloth and Velvet they’re prepar’d, Appear as tho’ by nature rear’d, His Camera Obscura too, and Microscope to take the view, Of scenes which gratify the mind, and you may purchase if inclin’d’. Despite his marketing skills and celebrity status, it seems Smart was unable to keep hold of any money that he made; when he died in 1846 he was listed as a pauper.
After being forgotten for many years, 21 of Smart’s pictures were included in an exhibition of Folk Art at Tate Britain in 2014. It was the first time his work had been gathered together in a major gallery and in such volume. Interest continued to grow along with the prices, and given that only around 80 of his pictures are now known to still exist, it’s a tight market. In October last year a picture titled The Soldier and The Maid, c.1817, sold at a UK auction for $9180; the only articulated picture made by Smart, it was one of only two known to exist. At the same sale a c.1820s picture called The Earth Stopper (an estate worker whose task it was to plug up fox holes at night) sold for $3740.
