Will Smith studied at Brisbane’s Central Technical College. For a number of years, he worked as a voluntary assistant at the library of the Queensland Art Fund, a project established by Vida Lahey and Daphne Mayo between 1930 and 1955 to promote public interest in the Queensland National Art Gallery. He was also a member of Sydney’s Contemporary Art Society. Smith’s watercolours are excellent examples of the new and dynamic approach to composition that emerged with the rise of Modernism in Australia.