"The noise level in the Académie Julian is always at a constant rumble: the scraping of benches on the floor as the artists jockey for a better view of the model, the lively banter of dozens of young men in three or four different languages, the swish and dab of brushes against canvas.

The air in the studio is warm and full of the mingled scents of linseed oil and turpentine, damp wool jackets and the smoke from pipes and cigarettes.

Wiping his brush on his smock, he waves to his friend, Joseph Lindon Smith, and they race down three flights of stairs to breathe the fresh air.

Smith was often among the first to enter a newly discovered tomb and knew most of the personalities at work in the area, including Lord George Carnarvon, Howard Carter, Gaston Maspero, and Theodore M. Davis.

Smith's house at Loon Point formed an important nucleus of the Dublin Art Colony, whose regular members included the painters Abbott Thayer and Rockwell Kent, publishers Charles Scribner and Henry Holt and whose visitors included Isabella Stewart Gardner, poet Amy Lowell, Mark Twain, and painter John Singer Sargent.