Joseph Lindon Smith - Egyptian Influence

Egyptian Influence

In 1898, Smith decided on a whim to visit Egypt. His paintings of Nile scenes and antiquities quickly brought him to the attention of Phoebe Hearst, who was underwriting excavations at Giza for the University of California, and Dr. George Andrew Reisner, the director of the expedition who was later to become a professor of Egyptology at Harvard University and curator of the Egyptian collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Reisner and other archaeologists enlisted Smith to document the fragile wall paintings in tombs that were just then coming to light.

His memoir, Tombs, Temples, and Ancient Art, was published after his death, on October 19, 1950. Edited by his wife, Corinna, the book is a riveting, first-hand account of the excavations at Giza and in the Valley of the Kings in their greatest period of discovery (1899–1950). Smith was often among the first to enter a newly discovered tomb and knew most of the personalities at work in the area, including Lord George Carnarvon, Howard Carter, Gaston Maspero, and Theodore M. Davis. In many cases, his paintings are the best surviving documentation of newly exposed, fragile antiquities, whose polychromy did not long survive the change of atmosphere.