Longview Art Museum Spotlight

Longview Museum of Fine Arts Spotlight

Above is “Summer Breeze” by Emily Guthrie Smith, 31x50 inches, oil on canvas. It is one of Longview Museum of Fine Arts’ pieces from their permanent collection.

Smith experimented with many media, including watercolors, oils, acrylics, sculpture, and mosaic, but she preferred pastels because they allowed her to work quickly. She was known for her portraiture and produced more than 2,000 portraits by the time of her death, in addition to hundreds of landscapes and still lifes.

She once said, “To me every painting is special. Now, I want to paint more of the beauty of nature but whether it is a landscape or portrait I try to go into or behind the subject to the essence and then show the dignity, the character, the inner being of the flowers, the mountains or the person. When I do this I am happy.”

Her third retrospective exhibition was at the Longview Museum of Fine Arts in September 1986 just before her death. The exhibit traveled to Texas Christian University where she taught portraiture in 1969.

Get more information on www.lmfa.org.