Graves International Art - Percy John Delf Smith

Percy John Delf Smith RDI (March 1882 – 30 October 1948) was a British artist who worked in engraving, painting, lettering, calligraphy and book design.

During the First World War, Delf Smith enlisted in the Royal Marines as a volunteer, serving on the Western Front in France. In his early thirties, he was older than most men serving. A lot of his war service was spent digging trenches behind the front lines, at one point coming under bombardment, seeing four men killed and six wounded nearby. Delf Smith as a serving soldier and not an official War Artist was several times reprimanded for drawing because of security concerns, although he received more freedom to carry out art over time through making connections with other soldiers. Finding sketching unsatisfying, he requested that his parents send him some copper plates and he created drypoint engravings of the war around Thiepval before and after being invalided out from France in June 1917. After his set of realistic depictions of the battlefield, he created a later series of seven prints, "Dance of Death", updating the medieval imagery of the dance of death to the war.

After the war, Delf Smith returned to London, where he worked as a designer and artist through his company, the Dorno Workshop and Studio (earlier Dorian Workshop and Studio), creating and executing designs for clients including The Sunday Times, the National Museum of Wales, King's College London, Southampton Civic Centre, the BBC, the Boy Scouts Association and London Transport. He also worked as a book designer. Reading Wuthering Heights had a strong effect on him and he created several sets of art inspired by it. In 1928, he married botanist Ellen Marion Delf, both from then on using the name Delf Smith. His wife's friend Margaret T. Martin described it as "the happiest of marriages". One of his assistants was William Sharpington, who later established his own successful studio. One of his last projects was two war memorial panels for the Free Church, Hampstead Garden Suburb.