Detail from The Canal, Amsterdam, 1889, James McNeill Whistler, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

Home 

Logan Pearsall Smith

Nationality: American
Date of birth: 1865.10.18
Place of birth: Millville, NJ
Date of death: 1946.03.02
Category: writer

Identity:

Logan Pearsall Smith was a writer and critic.

Life:

Pearsall Smith studied at Harvard (1884-85) and Oxford (1887-90). Susequently he was inspired to take up a literary career by Walter Pater, and he wrote epigrams, essays and biography. His publications include The Life & Letters of Sir Henry Wooton (1907) Words and Idioms (1925) and Milton and his Modern Critics (1941).

In 1891 he posed in place of Montesquiou for Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac y398, but 'the task was one of the most arduous I have ever undertaken. Whistler had not the slightest pity for his subjects.' Smith is also referred to in Whistler's correspondence around 1896.

Bibliography:

Pearsall Smith, L., Unforgotten Years, Boston, 1939, pp. 206-9; Munhall, Edgar, Whistler and Montesquiou. The Butterfly and the Bat, New York, 1995 , pp. 75-6.