Based in Philadelphia, Russell Smith worked as a scene painter for local theaters, including the Walnut Street Theatre and the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, and the Grand Opera House in Wilmington. In his spare time he painted landscapes—primarily regional subjects—in a style derived from the Hudson River School painters Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand, whom he admired. He exhibited frequently at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He was born in Scotland but moved to the United States as a boy. His family settled in Pittsburgh, where he studied art with James Lambdin, a portrait painter who had studied with Thomas Sully. Smith married Mary Priscilla Wilson, also an artist, and they had two children, Xanthus Russell Smith and Mary Russell Smith, who also became painters.
