Anita Miller Smith

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Anita M. Smith (1893–1968) was an impressionist and regionalist painter most closely associated with Woodstock, NY. In the 1930’s Smith became an herbalist—and her venture, Stonecrop Gardens, was one of only five enterprises of like size in the Northeast, serving clients in every one of the 48 contiguous states.¹ During this phase of her career, she authored and published As True as the Barnacle Tree, a short herbal based on ancient and contemporary practices. In the 1950’s she wrote the town of Woodstock’s first history, Woodstock History and Hearsay.

Biography

Smith’s paternal ancestor, Giles Knight, arrived in the American colonies aboard The Welcome with William Penn in 1682. Knight, a Quaker and former English landowner, established a farm in the Byberry region of Pennsylvania. One of Knight’s descendants, Henry Cavalier Smith, an attorney-at-law, married Lucy Pancoast. The couple assumed control of Wyndlawn, the Smith country estate in Torresdale, Pennsylvania. This was where Anita M. Smith was born on Oct. 20, 1893, the youngest of five children.

On New Year’s Eve 1899, a sleepy six-year old Anita was roused before midnight to join her family on the roof of their Philadelphia townhouse to welcome the new century. She wrote, “with a burst of light and the toot of horns the City of Philadelphia ushered in the twentieth century . . . . Our mother had a strong feeling for history and she made us realize we were witnessing a tremendous event . . . a time for taking stock . . . making resolutions . . . an occasion for a tremendous up-rush of endeavor.”²

In 1910 Anita Smith and her mother embarked on a tour of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Smith also took instruction at the Académie Julian in Paris, the art studios of Ferruccio Scattola in Venice, the atelier Forcello in Cairo, and the British Academy in Rome. Each day was divided between morning art instruction and afternoon tours of such museums as the Louvre in Paris, the Palace of the Doges in Venice, and ancient cathedrals including St. Sophia’s in Constantinople.

In 1912 Smith ventured up to the art colony at Woodstock, NY, using money intended for a ball gown, and enrolled in the Art Students League summer program. That fall she returned to Philadelphia to take lessons from William Merritt Chase. In an interview with the Poughkeepsie Sunday New Yorker, she described how her deepening commitment to art forced her to break away from the Philadelphia social whirl and move to Woodstock. Later on in the article, she said she that she believed it “necessary to dig into the history of the countryside” and that she “didn’t see how one could paint the Catskills without knowing something of the people who lived among them, thus reflecting a literary approach to art . . . .”³ In 1913 she commenced studies under John F. Carlson at the Arts Students League in Woodstock.

Smith painted in an impressionist and a post-impressionist manner. She worked in oil, watercolor and graphic media. Primarily a landscape artist, she painted in such diverse locales as New Hope, PA; Provincetown, MA; Charleston, SC; New York, NY; Taxco de Alarcon, Mexico and Paris, France. She was considered a talented artist in the Woodstock community, where her contemporaries included John F. Carlson, Marion Bullard, Frank Swift Chase and George Macrum.

From 1916 to 1928 Smith’s works were exhibited nationally at such venues as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, the Art Gallery of Toronto, the Woodstock Artists Association, the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Louisville Art Association. In 1919 her painting Houses in the Dunes won a Lambert Purchase Prize at the Pennsylvania Academy—along with the work of such fellow artists as Paulette Van Roekens and Lilian Westcott Hale.

In the 1930’s Miss Smith embarked on a second career as an herbalist. In notes for a radio program, she explained her career move by commenting that the Depression prompted her to leave painting. She went on to write that people with a color sense are supposed to have a keen sense of taste and, since many of the artists were excellent cooks, she and her associates tried to share tasty dishes with one another. To accomplish this, she found it necessary to grow a few herbs for culinary purposes. She was also an enthusiastic gardener and she found that her hobby changed to a vocation as her herb gardens began to turn a tidy profit. This was during a time when popular interest in herbs soared across the country.

In 1934 Smith built a bluestone cottage near the Rock City Corners at the base of Overlook Mountain, about a mile from the center of Woodstock. By 1937 a greenhouse was added, and a short time later she had over 150 herbs under cultivation—with commercial clients that included H.J. Heinz. During this period, Smith’s As True as the Barnacle Tree was cited in a New York Herald Tribune article, and its writer dubbed her the “The Herb Lady of the Catskills.”

After the war, Dr. James T. Shotwell, a neighbor and friend, asked Smith to compile a service database; the record was to include all Woodstockers who fought for their country during the Second World War. This formed a key chapter in her soon-to-be-published book, Woodstock History and Hearsay—the town’s first official chronicle. Smith based her narrative on detailed scholarship as well as a wide-ranging collection of local folk stories gathered from Catskill mountain families and resident artists. The story’s arc begins with Native American times and concludes with chapters on the art colony, leading up to the Woodstock Festival of 1969. Smith also wrote The Landscape of History and The Quest of Abel Knight: The Quakers and Shakers. Due to a resurgence of public interest in Smith’s paintings, her works were exhibited at the USArtists Show in 2003 and 2005. In 2006, publisher WoodstockArts released a second edition of Woodstock History and Hearsay.

References:

1. Browning, Betty, “Garden Hobby Grows to One Now of Business Importance,” Sunday Press, Kingston, NY (1940), 1, 2.
2. Smith, Anita, “Trimmings for the Family Tree,” Unpublished Memoir (1952), 1.
3. Jonas, Louise, “Debutante, Anita Smith, Chose to Become Ulster Herbalist,” Poughkeepsie Sunday New Yorker, (November 22, 1942), 5A.

External Links:

AskArt [1]

National Association of Women Artists [2]

Pennsylvania Art Conservatory [3]

WoodstockArts [4]

Woodstock Artists Association and Museum [5]