Olive Carleton Smyth

Olive Carleton Smyth was born in Glasgow in 1882 and attended Glasgow School of Art between 1900-1909 after which she worked as an illuminator, a decorator and as a gesso and fresco artist. As Jude Burkhauser identifies in her book entitled The Glasgow Girls: Women in Art and Design 1880-1920, Smyth's work "shares an affinity with that of the Vienna Secessionist Gustav Klimt in the employment of jewel-like highlights, and in shared design motifs particularly the Japanese-inspired use of patterned clothing as a design element, exemplified in one of Smyth's later paintings entitled Pytheas Buys Amber. An exquisite work from around the same time as The Guardiani also shows her consistent use of Celtic design. Both of these splendidly detailed paintings are...among the best of Olive Smyth's known works." (p. 170)

The story upon which the current work is based is that of Pytheas, a Greek merchant, geographer and explorer from the Greek colony Massilia (today Marseille, France). He made a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe in around 325 BC and is believed to have circumnavigated Great Britain between 330 and 320 BC. Pytheas is the first person on record to describe the midnight sun, the aurora and polar ice. After completing his survey of Great Britain, Pytheas traveled to the shallows on the continental North Sea coast, en route visiting the Isle of Abalus, "upon the shores of which, amber is thrown up by the waves in spring, it being an excretion of the sea in a concrete form; as that the inhabitants use this amber by way of fuel, and sell it to their neighbours, the Teutones." (Pliny the Elder, The Natural History).