The disciplines of art and engineering seldom are manifest in equal portions in an individual. Yet when such a combination does occur, it comprises a third discipline that transcends both: genuine craftsmanship.
One such craftsman schooled in these disciplines is Robert Grant Smith, whose art is evident in his drawings and paintings, and whose engineering talent took wing in aircraft designs as dissimilar as the propeller-driven Douglas SBD Dauntless and the jet-propelled McDonnell Douglas A-4 Skyhawk.
Smith (R. G. or Bob to his friends) is a native Californian who has spent his entire life in his home state. But events well beyond California’s borders put him on the path that would lead to worldwide recognition as an acknowledged master of naval and aviation art. Charles Lindbergh’s transtlantic flight in 1927 seized young Smith’s imagination, and when he was graduated from high school in Oakland four years later, his course was set. He wanted to design airplanes.
During the next five years, Smith earned an engineering degree from the Polytechnic College in Oakland—and even worked in northern California gold mines for a while to make ends meet. But in 1936, he landed a drafting job with the Northrop Corporation, which became a division of Douglas Aircraft Company. Hired at the rate of $18 per week. Smith worked there for two years. He recalls, “In those days a person joined the aircraft industry because he liked airplanes—certainly not for the money.”
Eventually, Smith came to the attention of Edward Heinemann, Douglas’s chief engineer. Impressed with the young man's ability, attitude, and willingness to work long hours, Heinemann brought Smith into the design team as a configuration engineer.
To this day. Smith thinks of himself as an engineer more than an artist. He credits his early mastery of design concepts with much of the realism attributed to his Paintings. There is, he insists, a relationship between knowledge of human anatomy essential to figure painters and aircraft “anatomy” known to engineers. He explains, “To depict any surface with character, one has to understand exactly what is beneath it and what its function is.”
Smith never enhanced his thorough technical knowledge with formal art training. The closest thing to instruction came in the early 1950s, when Smith met Arthur Beaumont, a well-known, highly regarded watercolorist who, as a Navy artist, visited Douglas Aircraft. Smith attended some of Beaumont’s weekend courses in Long Beach and learned about the more theoretical presentation of art, including composition, chiaroscuro, and color balance. This enabled Smith, who already had a wealth of practical knowledge, to “tie it all together,” to borrow his favorite phrase. Beaumont also exposed Smith to nautical art—a natural extension of his interest in naval aircraft.
Smith’s youthful adventures in the gold fields also kindled an abiding affection for landscapes, particularly the desert regions of the Southwest. These he paints for recreation, a welcome diversion from the often harried, frequently frantic demands of his bread-and-butter subjects.
Smith has found over some 35 years that the dichotomy of success seldom abates. With recognition and acclaim come increasing calls upon his time and talent, and the two are not easily juggled. Smith prefers to complete one canvas before turning to another, but such orderly procedure is not always possible. His commercial efforts alone are quite impressive, for his work has appeared in major ads or articles in such periodicals as Time, Life, Fortune, and The Reader's Digest. Countless other domestic and foreign periodicals have carried his art, in addition to Navy publications. The Time-Life Books series. The Epic of Flight, contained several Smith paintings, as have the Proceedings and Naval Institute Press books.
Some order was imposed upon the many demands on Smith’s time when Norma M. Bert entered the picture in 1960. Proprietor of her own fine art enterprise in Hemet, California, she handles most of the business aspects of Smith’s endeavors, freeing him to concentrate on painting. It has proven a beneficial partnership. More than one million R. G. Smith lithographs have been distributed, many to commercial clients, but others to Navy recruiters and policymakers in the Pentagon and industry.
According to Smith, the highlight of his career was spending 60 days in Vietnam, during two trips in 1968 and 1969. He returned with sketches of aviation, riverine, and Marine infantry operations he witnessed firsthand. Among them a stark, realistic sketch of SEALs [sea/air land (teams)] setting a night ambush, captured in the same spare style that John W. Thomason brought to tales of the “Old Corps.” The similarity is no accident, for Smith readily acknowledges the Thomason influence, which grew from reading Fix Bayonets! in high school.
The length and diversity of Smith’s professional relationship with the Navy has resulted in numerous honors, including a Distinguished Public Service Citation from the Chief of Naval Operations. In 1973, he became only the tenth person designated an honorary naval aviator; a considerable distinction in the years before proliferation of that accolade. Smith also is an honorary Blue Angel, which comes as no surprise. He has illustrated three generations of the team’s McDonnell Douglas aircraft: the F-4 Phantom, A-4 Skyhawk, and F/A-18 Hornet.
Smith seems to have no single favorite aircraft, even among those he has helped design. However, he estimates that he has drawn and painted more Skvhawks than anything else, with the World War II dauntless dive-bomber a close second.
Among the artist’s recent activities is a pet project—the newly established American Society of Aviation Artists Smith and four others became founding members at the inaugural meeting, attended by nearly 100 people, at the University of Virginia in June 1987. The founders include Joe Kotula (senior aviation artist), Keith Ferris (Air Force subjects), Ren Wicks (commercial artist), and Robert McCall (space subjects).
The organization recognizes two categories of participants: active members, who make most of their income from aviation or aerospace art; and associate members. The latter includes those “who just like to paint airplanes,” Smith says.
One of the society’s primary goals is to promote aviation art as fine art. With anything so subjective, a hard-and-fast definition of fine art is difficult, but Smith and his colleagues have made a start. “The difference between an aviation artist and an aviation illustrator involves more than just the airplane,” Smith explains. “You must consider the whole environment—the earth and sky, sun and clouds. I’d say that’s the main difference.” He draws an analogy: marine illustrators who may skillfully depict ships but are marginal in portraying sea state and weather conditions.
Smith often is asked the “secret” of his success by aspiring young artists. Allowing himself a knowing grin, he states that there are no secrets, no shortcuts. He firmly believes that good art is good art, regardless of the subject, and he is amused by youngsters who expect to start at the top and work their way up.
The R. G. Smith formula is time-tested and proven. It began with building models from scratch, then progressing to a sketchpad, and finally a drafting table. At each plateau new knowledge and technique were added as the process continued to evolve. It is, Smith notes, a process that still is evolving. That evolution may, in fact, be the secret that has produced the talent of R. G. Smith—engineer, artist, craftsman.
