URE SMITH, SYDNEY (1887-1949)

**ON HOLD - EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST**
 
“Towards Garden Island, Sydney Harbour” (c.1920)
watercolour
25 x 36cm
signed lower left
*private collection, Sydney
 
Ure Smith was an Australian arts publisher, artist and promoter who "did more than any other Australian to publicize Australian art at home and overseas".Unlike most of his contemporaries, he seldom submitted his own art work for publication. He published some of his own work in limited edition books such as Old Sydney (1911) and Old Colonial By-Ways (1928), prompted by his passion for preserving historic buildings. In 1916 he founded a syndicate with Bertram Stevens and Charles Lloyd Jones to publish Art in Australia, and in the same year he founded the commercial art studio and advertising firm Smith and Julius with Harry Julius, specialising in high quality artwork for prestigious clients such as Dunlop[8][9] and Berlei. They employed such prominent Sydney artists as James Muir Auld, Fred Britton, Frank Burdett, Harold Cazneaux, Albert Collins (who was a director from 1916–51), Roy de Maistre, Adrian Feint, George Frederick Lawrence, Percival Leason, John Passmore, Lloyd Rees, Bill Sparrow and Roland Wakelin. After 1923 he ceased active involvement with the company. He founded magazine The Home, published monthly from February 1920–42, in the mould of Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and Vanity Fair. He founded Ure Smith Pty. Ltd. in 1939, initially to publish Australian National Journal (quarterly, 1939–47). He edited books on J. J. Hilder, Arthur Streeton, Blamire Young, Hans Heysen, Norman Lindsay, Elioth Gruner, Margaret Preston, George Lambert, Douglas Annand, Francis Lymburner and William Dobell. He published Present Day Art in Australia (his son Sam Ure Smith produced a similar book, Present Day Art and Australia). He also published the Australian Art Annual and a number of book series including the Walkabout Pocketbooks and the Ure Smith Miniature Series.