Lionel Smythe

Lionel Percy Smythe RA RWS RI ROI (4 September 1839 – July 1918) was a British artist, and etcher.

He was also partly educated in France and spent holidays there at Wimereux in Normandy with his stepfather William Morrison Wyllie and family.

Smythe painted rural landscapes, genre and maritime scenes, people and animals in both oils and watercolours, and became associated with the Idyllists.

[2] Smythe and his wife Alice made frequent trips to France and eventually settled in Normandy in 1879, in an old Napoleonic fortress on the coast at Wimereux - until the building was inundated by the sea.

Smythe lived and worked here until his death in 1918, the countryside and rural life of the area becoming the main inspiration for his art.