Born on 22 October 1879, Matthew Smith, was interested in painting and drawing from an early age and studied art at Manchester College of Technology (1901-1905) and the Slade School of Fine Art in London (1905-1908) -  without, however, showing particular promise. He moved to France late in 1908, and in Etaples and Pont-Aven painted still-lifes and portraits that are Intimist in manner, showing attention to local color and modeling. After spending an extensive period in Paris, painting and exhibiting in the Salon he joined the London Group in 1920 after a long illness, and then spent the autumn and winter of 1920 in the village of St Columb Major in Cornwall. Between the wars he spent long periods in France and in Cornwall, later in the 1930s returning to London.

Smith applied dark saturated color and an increasing fluidity of construction to a series of Cornish landscapes, strongly Expressionist in character, the culmination of an earlier style. Smith was knighted in 1954, and died on 29 September 1959.