[2] His father was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1851, did much, with his uncle William Cumming (1813–1908), to develop the engraving of bank-notes, and was an excellent landscape-engraver.

[3] The son studied with him and in the National Academy of Design; engraved on steel vignettes for bank-notes and some illustrations, notably F. O. C. Darley's pictures for James Fenimore Cooper's novels; was elected an associate of the National Academy in 1865—the year after he first began painting—and an academician in 1876; and was a founder (1866) of the American Water Color Society, of which he was treasurer in 1866–73 and president in 1873–78, and of the New York Etching Club.

[1] Among his paintings, in oils, are Evening among the Sierras (1876) and The Cliffs of Normandy (1885), and in water colour, A Scrub Race (1876) and The Passing Herd (1888).

[3] A portrait of Smillie by Henry Augustus Loop is in the collection of the National Academy of Design, as is another by James Hamilton Shegogue.

[4] James David Smillie died on September 15, 1909, at his home in New York City.