William A. Smith: "A relentless regimen of drawing..."

"I was put through my paces in the old fashioned style." That's how William A. Smith described his early formal art education, which began at age 12.

Theodore J. Keane, who had once been the dean at the Chicago Art Institute School, was the young Bill Smith's first art teacher and mentor back in Toledo, Ohio, where Smith was born.


"That teenage study was not of the glamorous sort," says the article on Smith in the June 1952 issue of American Artist. "At least it would not have been except for the magic of Keane's inspiring influence."

"Indeed it was a relentless regimen of drawing from casts and still lifes for two full years before a living model was thought of."


"But in those years," continues author Ernest W. Watson, "Bill really learned to draw and he learned a lot about those intangibles which activate the more subtle facets of his dramatic career."



My William A. Smith Flickr set.