Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith was born in 1960 in Kansas City, Missouri, and has lived and worked primarily in Arizona. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from Arizona State University. His subject matter centers on the landscapes of the American Southwest and the Rocky Mountains, worked in oil in a plein air, representational tradition. He is represented by Legacy Gallery, which maintains locations in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, and his work also circulates through Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson and through regional auction houses such as Scottsdale Art Auction.

This artist should not be confused with others sharing the name Matthew Smith, most notably Sir Matthew Arnold Bracy Smith, CBE (1879 to 1959), the British Fauvist painter who trained at the Manchester School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art, studied briefly with Henri Matisse in Paris, exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1938 and 1950, and whose work entered the collection of the Tate Gallery. Other unrelated artists using the same name include a printmaker working near Quincy Pond in New Hampshire and a painter trained at the University of Hawaii Art School. The profile below concerns only the Arizona based landscape painter, born 1960.

Available sources describe Matthew Smith within the context of contemporary Southwestern and plein air painting and regional gallery representation. No verbatim, attributable critical quotation from a named critic at a major outlet could be located in the available research, so none is reproduced here.

Public auction data specific to this artist is limited in the sources available for this profile, and no confirmed record sale price, work title, auction house, or sale date could be verified as of this writing. His primary market runs through Legacy Gallery, and individual paintings periodically appear at regional auctions, including Scottsdale Art Auction, which has listed lots under "Matt Smith (b. 1960)." Collectors should treat any auction result for the name "Matthew Smith" with caution until the specific artist and lot are confirmed, given how many artists share the name.

The most important step for a prospective buyer is confirming identity: searches for "Matthew Smith" or "Matt Smith" surface a British Fauvist painter who died in 1959, a New Hampshire printmaker, a University of Hawaii trained painter, and this Arizona based landscape painter, among others, and auction and provenance records must be checked against the correct individual. There is no published catalogue raisonne for this artist, so provenance should be traced through Legacy Gallery and through the dealer or auction house of sale. Because public auction volume is thin and no verified record price could be confirmed, valuation for this artist should rely on current gallery pricing and dealer guidance rather than on assumptions drawn from same-name auction results for other artists.