ELMER BOYD SMITH

Painter, illustrator, and writer Elmer Boyd Smith was born in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1860. He studied at the Académie Julian in Paris with Boulanger and Lefebvre and remained in France through the 1880s and 90s. When he arrived in the United States, he traveled through the West on a sketching trip and briefly lived in Kansas City, where he was the first director of the Kansas City Art Academy and School of Design. He settled in Connecticut in the early 1900s. He was the author and illustrator of several children’s books, including “The Story of Noah’s Ark,” “The Chicken World,” “Pocahontas and Captain John Smith,” and “The Story of Our Country.” He died in 1943.