Alexander's brother, the father, sent Thomas to a school in France whilst he conducted his business in Canada and the East Indies.

He later became interested in painting from an Italian master painter whom he met whilst serving as a traveling tutor to a British family.

By the end of that decade, Smith was having his work accepted by both the Salon des Beaux Arts in Paris and the Royal Academy in London.

Smith was known to the Barbizon School of realistic painting, including the animal painters Constant Troyon and John Phillip RA.

He drew up plans for a library, museum, and a reading room and he offered £5,000 to the council if they could donate a site within two years.

Unlike other depictions at the time, in which black people were included as servants, Smith's portraits Fellah of Kinneh and The Pipe of Freedom show his subjects as independent and free; they were painted to celebrate the abolition of slavery in America in 1865 following the American Civil War.