William Collingwood Smith was born and grew up in Greenwich, England, within a cultivated bourgeois milieu.
From an early age, he developed a genuine passion for drawing and painting. Without following a structured academic training, he gradually trained himself as a self-taught artist, while benefiting from the encouragement of local artists. He thus occasionally attended the teaching of some of them, notably that of James Duffield Harding (1798–1863).
The young artist developed a marked passion for landscape, a genre particularly appreciated during the Victorian era and one in which he found a natural means of expressing his talent. A painter of landscapes as well as seascapes, he initially worked in oil before turning to a technique then rapidly gaining ground in Great Britain: watercolour. The revival of this practice in France in the 1820s owed much to England, where watercolour had already become, from the eighteenth century onward, a true “national art,” freed from academic tutelage following the founding of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1804. Thus Delacroix, Charlet and Géricault were introduced to this technique by British artists such as the Fielding brothers or Bonington.
By observing the works of Turner, Girtin and other masters of the Royal Watercolour Society, Smith gradually discerned the full potential of this medium: the spontaneity of working en plein air, the freshness of the rendering and the pursuit of a natural expression, free from artifice. Endowed with an innate sense of drawing, the artist readily embraced this new technique, which perfectly matched his sensibility.
Smith particularly appreciated the chromatic richness made possible by watercolour, a medium through which he could subtly capture changing atmospheric effects. He gained a certain recognition by exhibiting at the Royal Academy (1836–1855), the British Institution (1836–1855) and later the Watercolour Society (1843–1855). The dexterity and meticulousness of his brushwork earned him genuine authority within artistic circles. Elected an Associate Member of the Watercolour Society in 1843, he became its Treasurer from 1854 to 1879. At the same time, he taught art to both professionals and amateurs.
From 1850 onwards, he travelled throughout England and beyond its borders, including Italy and France, where he drew new sources of inspiration. In Normandy and then in Paris, the artist produced numerous watercolours from these exceptional views, sketched directly from life.
The history of the Tuileries Palace—part of whose central façade can be seen in the background of our composition—began in 1564, when Catherine de’ Medici, widow of Henry II and future influential figure at the side of her son Charles IX, ordered the construction of a new residence. Little attracted to the existing medieval and Renaissance buildings, she had an entirely new palace built, albeit not far from the former royal residences. For this purpose, she chose a site located about one hundred metres beyond the walls of Paris, on clay land that had been exploited for centuries for the manufacture of roof tiles: hence the name of the site, the “Tuileries.”
On 23 May 1871, during the insurrection of the Paris Commune, the insurgents seized power in the capital. The order was given to set fire to what had until then been one of the major symbols of imperial authority: the Tuileries Palace. Transformed into a vast blaze, the building was reduced to a mass of ruins, which remained abandoned for twelve years before being completely demolished.
Unknowingly, Smith here immortalises a historic monument destined to disappear. In this happy interlude of Parisian life under the Second Empire, the painter highlights a place of promenade emblematic of the bourgeoisie: the garden, a space of sociability and leisure. Children play, dogs run at the feet of elegantly dressed walkers—top hats and crinolines—strolling through a peaceful and refined atmosphere.
Until its demolition, the Tuileries Palace remained a highly favoured subject for painters and draughtsmen who, from the garden paths, sketched scenes of Parisian life. Throughout the nineteenth century, many artists, like Smith, were drawn to this architecture emblematic of power. Under Louis XVIII, Antoine Ignace Melling (1763–1831) produced a gouache of similar dimensions to our sheet depicting a crowd in front of the palace (fig. 1).
A master of the art of watercolour, Smith excelled particularly in the use of wash, which he applied with great restraint, never overloading the sheet. He understood the fundamental importance of light and rendered its effects through very fine superimpositions of transparent layers, intensifying the tones without weighing down the material. His subtle technique allowed him to faithfully convey atmospheric variations: misty skies, diffuse humidity or golden glows gently illuminating the scene.
The artist granted a privileged place to the garden’s vegetation, which he animated through plays of light and shadow, lending the foliage a vaporous quality. He worked in delicate tonal harmonies, and the palette of our sheet is organised around ochres, blues, pearl greys and water greens, enhanced by a few more vivid touches in the figures in the foreground. The whole is imbued with a tonal softness that reinforces the calm and elegant atmosphere.
The contours, drawn directly with the pen, remain supple and discreet, favouring the delicacy of forms and movement. His mastery enabled him to give his compositions a character that is both natural and precious, often on an ambitious scale—as demonstrated by our sheet—rivaling the easel painting.
