ARMLESS ARTIST.

Timaru Herald, Volume C, Issue 15304, 25 March 1914, Page 7

ARMLESS ARTIST.

REMARKABLE MISFORTUNE. TURNED TO GOOD ACCOUNT. The "Armless Artist," Mr Wm. Smith, who is now practising and exhibiting his remarkable means of gaining a livelihood in a shop next the Theatre Royal, is well worth visiting. To bo able to paint decent pictures', holding the brush in one's teeth, is surely a remarkable faculty, and this is what Mr Smith does. How cleverly, and with what apparent ease and rapidity he does it must be seen to bo understood. And the results, though so to speak dashed off, are more than respectable. Most of the pictures he has exhibited on the walls, in a variety of subjects, will compare more than favourable with the "pot-boilers" that some New Zealand artists sell through the auction rooms. The young man, a native of Adelaide, is deserving of sympathy, for he lost his arms in a peculiarly painful manner. Falling from a tree when nine years of age, he badly smashed both hands and arms, and first amputations had to be followed by several others, until both arms were entirely removed at the shoulders, when he was sixteen. He then learned to write, holding the pen in liis teeth, and whenhehad acquired facility in writing in this peculiar wav influential people were led to take an interest in him. and placed liim as a pupil under •one of South Australia's Lest artists. Four years in Mr J Ashton's studio gave the young man both skill and taste, and enabled him to earn an honourable livelihood, in a way that merits generous assistance and encouragement. He proposes to stay a week or two in Timaru.