William St. Thomas Smith was born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1862, and came to Canada in 1869. He had some training at the Central Ontario School of Art in Toronto, but was mainly self-taught. He was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy and was awarded an honorary LLD from the University of Western Ontario in 1940. He often went on painting trips to England and France. His work was mainly landscapes and marine scenes. He died at St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1947.
