Art: Late Starter

"Degas once said a very wise thing," says frail, blue-eyed English Painter Matthew Smith: " 'It's easy to have talent at 20 but what is difficult is to have talent at 50.' " Last week Artist Smith, with a big show of watercolors, drawings and oils at London's Redfern Gallery, could boast plenty of talent at 70.

As a painter, Smith had been a late and uncertain starter. After making halfhearted attempts at earning his-living in the family wire works and in a Bradford woolen mill, he persuaded his parents to let him study commercial art in Manchester. His real artistic life began in 1903 when he crossed the channel to Brittany.

There he took his time learning to paint, sopping up the brilliant colors of the French countryside, studying the revolutionary techniques of les fauves (the wild beasts), including Matisse, Braque and Dufy, who were then setting France on its ear.

Brilliant Pillows. Finally in 1915, diffident Matthew Smith screwed up his courage, asked Jacob Epstein for an invitation to the London Group Exhibition where, at 36, he showed his first picture. Doubting Matthew ("I wanted to be sure I had something to say") waited ten more years before he had his first one-man show. By then his furnace reds, bonfire oranges and gas-jet blues had warmed not only Sculptor Epstein but a lot of British painters as well. When Portraitist Augustus John was asked, "Who are the three greatest British artists?" he answered, "Well, there's Matthew Smith, and there's Smith, M., and then—there's Smith."

Once he put them on view, Smith's landscapes, his luscious nudes lounging against brilliant pillows, his masterful floral pieces quickly earned him a reputation as England's foremost colorist. In his one-man show last year he sold £10,000 worth of pictures in the first two days.

A Little, Dubious. Matthew Smith, who lost his two sons in the R.A.F. in World War II, is living alone these days in a tiny flat in grubby Chelsea. The 61 bright watercolors and drawings of still lifes, models and landscapes, which make up the bulk of his current show, were painted, he says, "for relaxation." He did the work sitting in bed, his drawing block propped against his knees. Some were sketches for the oils he paints in furious three-hour sessions at his nearby studio.

Once "passionately affected" by flowers, Smith now finds the same thrill in fruits and leaves, devotes a half of his current exhibit to studies of them. He has few artistic theories, holds that "an artist's best thinking is done with a brush in hand. Any vague thoughts you may have away from a canvas don't come to much . . ."

Although with Old Master John Constable and Painter-Sculptress Barbara Hepworth, Smith is one of three artists chosen to represent Britain in Venice's big biennial next June, he still is a little dubious of his success. When pressed, he quietly admits, "It's nice to feel one is still producing all right."