KATE SMITH

Kate Smith was a British Pictorialist Photographer who exhibited between 1903 to the mid 1930s. (Catherine Mary) Kate Smith was born on the 2nd of March 1861 to Mary Elizabeth Hepburn (1834-1885) and Joseph Gutteridge Smith (1823-1914), a paper manufacturer. Smith had 6 brothers and sisters and 4 half brothers. She lived at Hamper Mills House in Watford until 1917, taking photographs of friends in the countryside around Watford and photographing her subjects nude or partially draped in country locations as dryads or fairy type compositions. 

 

Smith first exhibited two studies at the 1903 RPS Salon and subsequently was included in the annual exhibitions for 1904-5, 1907-8, 1910-12, and 1914 in the years before World War I. Smith was an RPS member in 1908 and from 1920 onwards when she became an ARPS Associate of The Royal Photographic Society. In 1925 she had a one woman show and was awarded a Fellowship (FRPS). She later lived in Chiswick and moved to 42, Mill Road in Worthing in 1936 and lived there until her death on 2 April 1953.