SMITH, Clement

The artist noted in his diary on May 11, 1935, that he had received an order to paint this man who came from Milwaukee, but who had died in Pasadena six months ago. He finished the picture on July 5, 1935, having shown the picture to the late sitter’s wife on July 2, when he was requested to alter the expression of the face.

Almost certainly Clement Clare Smith (born in Ohio in October 1866) who was on the board of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation 1915-1935. On 22 June 1899 he married Ella Madeline Miller (born in Milwaukee on 11 November 1871), daughter of Benjamin Kurts Miller and Annie M. Smith. He was president of Columbia Construction Company, electric railway engineers and contractors in 1904. He lived at 2121 N. Terrace Avenue from 1904 in a two-storey, Neo-Georgian house designed by Alexander C. Eschweiler, constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond with corner quoins. Dormers and the one story Doric portico are crowned by triangular pediments and the house is formal and symmetrical. In 1919, Eschweiler designed the compatible garage. In 1911 Smith joined with his brother-in-law, utility lawyer George Miller, to found the Wisconsin Securities Company on East Waters Street, which acquired and amalgamated disparate state utilities as Wisconsin Public Service, and who stepped down as President in 1926 when this company was taken over. He was later first vice-president of the Heil Company which is one of the last of Milwaukee’s major family owned companies. Joseph F. Heil, son of Julius P. Heil, governor of Wisconsin from 1938-1942, and his wife Marjorie, made the Smith home at N. Terrace Avenue their home for some time.