Jeffrey Smart

Jeffrey Smart AO
Jeffrey Smart. Photo by Michel Lawrence.
Born	Frank Jeffrey Edson Smart (1921-07-26)26 July 1921 Adelaide, South Australia
Died	20 June 2013(2013-06-20) (aged 91) Montevarchi, Tuscany, Italy
Nationality	Australian
Education	Pulteney Grammar School Unley High School Adelaide Teachers College SA School of Art and Crafts
Known for	Landscape painting
Movement	Precisionism
Awards	Commonwealth Jubilee Art Prize (1951) Honorary Doctorate (1999) Officer of the Order of Australia (2001)

Frank Jeffrey Edson Smart, AO (26 July 1921 – 20 June 2013) was an expatriate Australian painter known for his precisionist depictions of urban landscapes.

Smart was born and educated in Adelaide where he worked as an Art teacher. After departing for Europe in 1948 he studied in Paris at La Grande Chaumière, and later at the Académie Montmartre under Fernand Léger. He returned to Australia 1951, living in Sydney, and began exhibiting frequently in 1957. In 1963, he moved to Italy, and in 1971 after a successful exhibition in London, bought "Posticcia Nuova" near Arezzo in Tuscany where he resided with his partner until his death.

His autobiography, Not Quite Straight, was published in 1996. A major retrospective of his works travelled around Australian art galleries 1999–2000.

Jeff Smart, as he was generally known for the first thirty years of his life, was born in Adelaide in 1921. He started drawing at an early age. "My parents would give me large sheets of paper, often the backs of posters or calendars ... anything". He was educated at Pulteney Grammar School and Unley High School, and originally wanted to become an architect. However, after studying at the Adelaide Teachers College and the South Australian School of Art and Crafts in 1937–1941, he taught art in schools for the South Australian Education Department in 1942–1947. In the early 1940s he accompanied local maritime artist, John Giles, in painting industrial landscapes at Port Adelaide. He joined the Royal South Australian Society of Arts around 1941 and was elected vice-president in 1950. It was during this period that he acknowledged his homosexuality.

Smart travelled to Europe in 1948, studying in Paris at La Grand Chaumière and later the Académie Montmartre under Fernand Léger. "As my technique grew, I found I could paint those things I liked looking at, those slum streets behind the city apartments". In 1950 he lived on the island of Ischia in the bay of Naples, where he painted with Donald Friend, Michael Shannon and Jacqueline Hick.