David Smith was born in Lowestoft in 1920 and studied at the Slade winning the Abbey Major Rome Scholarship in 1949. He showed regularly at the RA and the London Group and was elected RE in 1951. He had over 60 shows and a retrospective at Bankside Gallery in 1996. Watercolour hugely influenced by Eric Ravilious. His work is represented in numerous collections including HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, Barclays Bank and Sheffield. He took up the position of Official Artist on board the British Antarctic Survey's annual relief voyage in 1975.
Impressed by his work in Antarctica, the officers of Trinity House approached him with the mammoth task of recording the lighthouses of England and Wales. David Smith died in 1999.