Interior of a Smithy

Exhibited at the Academy in 1815, "Interior of a Smithy" is a rare painting in American art. It is the only known genre scene by Bass Otis, a Massachusetts-born and New York-trained portraitist and engraver who worked in Philadelphia between 1812 and 1845. It is, furthermore, one of the earliest, if not the only, known depiction of industrialization in the United States at that time. Scholars have long maintained that the moonlit interior is reminiscent of the nocturnal factory scenes of the British painter Joseph Wright of Derby, which Otis doubtless knew through engravings. The moody lighting and dramatic scale of the architecture and carefully observed implements in relation to the much smaller workers suggest the grandeur, importance, and mystery of industry, at a moment when a new country full of raw materials was coming into its own as a manufacturing power. The artist presented this painting to the Academy in 1845, roughly thirty years after he created it, suggesting that it held particular importance for him. Otis actively participated in the artistic life of Philadelphia, producing what is most likely the first published lithograph in the Unite States ("Reverend Abner Kneeland," 1818), as well as teaching young artists Henry Inman and John Neagle, both whom are represented in the Academy's collections.