Phoebe Pickard
Not long after he and his wife had come to live in Saffron Walden, the town held a Festival, and Edwin was invited to collaborate in a production of the drama of Job in the Parish Church. Another distinguished artist, the composer, Dr. Gordon Jacob, had written special music for this, and Edwin's job was to be responsible for an exhibition of paintings of the Creation, by local artists, which was to run, concurrently with the week of the production, round the walls of the church.
This huge and daunting task - for St. Mary's is one of the largest churches in Essex - was undertaken in a way at once wholehearted and single-minded. Not only single-minded but also practically single-handed. Familiar as Edwin was, architecturally and as painter and photographer, with churches, he knew from the start what he wanted, and preferred to do all the pre liminary work on his own. This included the designing and actual making of one feature which, in the event, lent an inspired unity to the whole exhibition as nothing else could have done; a hand-painted "marble" wallpaper, based on the marble in Italian churches, which was to form a running backcloth to all the birds, beasts, flowers and fishes (which illustrate the great discourse in Job between God and the patriach) round the north, south and west walls of the church. When finally hung, this basically flesh-coloured wallpaper "all done by hand", marvellously warmed the otherwise cold grey stone around it. Weeks of work went into making it - as indeed into the organization of the collection, selection and finally the hanging of the dozens of individual pictures to be shown against it. Through all the preparatory weeks, Edwin worked on his own, either at home in studio or garden, or else in the church. It was impossible not to feel a growing confidence in a craftsman so gentle, so sure of exactly what effect he wanted, so ceaselessly active - and all this for love!
From a man with plenty of time on his hands, it would still have been generous; but from one who never stopped working and yet somehow managed to fit this extra job in, it was superhuman and an education to watch, in all its stages. I for one shall never forget it.
From the catalogue produced
to accompany the exhibition
'Aspects of the Art of Edwin Smith' at The
Minories,
Colchester in 1974.
