Biography provided by the Metropolitan Museum of Art)
 
Born into a farming family, Smith rose from his humble beginnings through the textile trade. An inheritance from his father-in-law in 1847 freed him from a career in commerce, allowing him to pursue many interests. Known locally as “Philosopher Smith,” he was a collector of natural history and a numismatist. Skilled with a lathe, he built microscopes and other instruments. Smith took up waxed-paper photography in 1852, documenting extensively the countryside and ruined abbeys of East Anglia for a period of at least twelve years. Active in his community, he was a director of the gasworks and a member of the committee set up to bring water to Wisbech. Smith’s photographs of the river Nene were shown to Parliament as persuasive evidence of how this should be done.