In his lifetime the painter Matthew Smith was frequently seen as an English Fauve or as a disciple of Matisse, but in fact he evolved his own distinctive style independently from anything he had seen in English art school or the French galleries. This illustrated biography looks at the influences on Smith, from the rejection of his manufacturer father's Victorian tastes, Smith's failure at the Slade, his experience of the modern movements in France, and the effects of World War I, to a passionate love affair in middle age which enabled him to establish his own turbulent style and subject matter of still lifes, landscapes and uninhibited nudes.