Smith is best known as a portraitist who spent most of his career in New York City, where he also painted the occasional cityscape and seascape. A reported member of the Salmagundi Art Club in Greenwich Village, he painted many capital-S Society portraits, including one of President Dwight D. Eisenhower for the Union Club of the City of New York. He also painted a portrait of fellow artist and Salmagundi Club member Childe Hassam, now in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art. He was the director of the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, NY.
