Bernard Smith (art historian)

Bernard William Smith (3 October 1916 – 2 September 2011) was an Australian art historian, art critic and academic, considered one of the most eminent art historians of the 20th century. His book Place, Taste and Tradition: a study of Australian art since 1788 is a key text in Australian art history, and an influence on Robert Hughes. Smith was associated with the Communist Party of Australia, and after leaving the party remained a prominent left-wing intellectual. Smith sold much of his art collection to fund one of the first art prizes for artists of Aboriginal background.

Smith was born in Balmain, Sydney to Charles Smith and Rose Anne Tierney on 3 October 1916. In 1941, he married his first wife, Kate Challis, who died in 1989. Smith married his second wife, Margaret Forster, in 1995.

Smith was educated at the University of Sydney. Between 1935 and 1944 he taught in the NSW Department of Education. After that he served as an education officer for the Art Gallery of NSW country art exhibitions programme from 1944. In 1948, he won a scholarship to study at the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, University of London. On his return to Australia in 1951, Smith returned to his position at the art gallery. In 1952, Smith was awarded a research scholarship at the newly established Australian National University, where he completed a PhD.

He was a lecturer and then a senior lecturer in the University of Melbourne's Fine Arts Department (1955–1967). In 1959, he convened a group of seven emerging figurative painters known as the Antipodeans, which organised its only exhibition in August 1959. Between 1963 and 1966, he worked as an art critic for The Age newspaper, Melbourne.

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