Born in Arlington, New Jersey in 1887, Houghton Cranford Smith studied at New York's Art Students League and the Academie Julien, Paris. He later taught painting and continued his studies in South America, the Caribbean Islands and at the University of Kansas. In 1933 he first visited South Carolina, his wife's home, and began to paint landscape scenes there. Smith died in New York City in 1983.

Biography courtesy of The Charleston Renaissance Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/charleston