What Became of Dr. Smith

Find the wall furthest to the left to start exploring this painting from the beginning.

The painting begins with a mysterious shadow cast upon the edge of a street, inching towards a building with a closed window. One major theme throughout this story is visibility and invisibility. What comes to mind when you see this figure? What can't we see? 

This scene depicts childbirth. Scroll to keep reading or skip ahead to the following section at your discretion.

The timeline splits, detailing the births of Dr. Smith and his future wife, Ethel Brandon, until they cross paths for the first time in 1915. The artist uses this compositional divide to illustrate how their lives were parallel, but varied. The artist describes that though both families subscribed to the white, aristocratic ideals of the South, they had vastly different family dynamics. 

In 1891, David Lawson Lemmon Smith was born to parents Minnie and J.T. Smith, in Donaldsonville, Louisiana. Black midwives were essential health care providers in their communities and were often hired by white families.

In 1894 in Natchez, Mississippi, Ethel is born to parents Daisy Patterson and Gerard Brandon, a lawyer and descendant of Mississippi’s fourth governor.

Pictured here are scenes from the Smith family during David’s childhood. The artist describes that David’s father, J.T. Smith, was “prone to mental aberrations and violent rages.” Here, members of the Smith family interrupt one of J.T.’s violent outbreaks.

David's mother Minnie yanks a small child away from their father’s raised arm as two small children attempt to hold him back. The surrounding community members appear to be unphased. 

Using curved roads to advance the story in time and space, the next scene flashes forward to David as an optometry student. Enlarged for emphasis, he towers above the community, suggesting his aspirations for leaving home and starting his career. Sight lines drawn outwards from his eyes look ahead to the future.  

For this scene, find the wall that is second from the left.

In this detail, Dr. Smith is seen in the car moving to the right. In nearby panels to the left, Dr. Smith moves in the opposite direction in the same car. These scenes signal his practice as a traveling optometrist who served communities in Louisiana and Mississippi. 

In 1916, the Smiths moved to Vicksburg, where they opened another optical shop. Ethel became pregnant with their first child.

A large eye shape frames this part of the composition. Inside its center, Ethel gives birth to Margaret. Later, Dr. Smith wrote to Ethel to apologize for missing the birth of their first child.

To the right of the eye, a large Dr. Smith walks by, as if he exists outside of the eye-like scene.  

Why might the artist have used the symbolic eye shape to depict this scene?  

This scene spans the third wall from the left and the center wall.

In the 1920s, Dr. Smith became the head of Mississippi’s Association of Optometrists, writing articles that Ethel edited.

In many, he wrote about his belief that everyone should have access to health care, including optometry. He tried to expose the manipulations of “spec-peddlers,” who were not optometrists, but instead preyed upon rural communities, selling fake glasses. 

In 1921, Dr. Smith invented and opened his traveling optometrist truck, outfitted with a waiting room, exam room, and grinding equipment so that custom lenses could be made on site. Hoping to travel throughout Mississippi and Louisiana to give exams and care, Smith advertised his business as providing equal care to all, regardless of race and class.

Upon opening, his business was fined and shut down due to new legislation passed to prevent itinerant optometry and spec-peddling. Dr. Smith wrote that he believed he was being targeted by “his enemies”—people who were against accessible and inclusive health care. 

By the end of that same year, Dr. Smith could not operate his business. His psychosis advanced. He wrote in his letters that he believed businessmen and lawyers were attempting to steal his money and that the Secret Service was drugging him. With no money left in savings, he told Ethel to move with the children to Shreveport for their safety.  

The artist gave additional context to these rural settings by adding contemporary versions of them, such as a modern trailer and basketball hoop. 

This scene is found on the center wall.

With less evidence to address what is fact, Saterstrom’s approach to painting Dr. Smith’s story shifted. In this swirling scene, figures engaged in violent acts surround both sides.

Foreboding vultures pick at a carcass.

Here, Dr. Smith stands outside the circle of culminating events and pastes papers onto the scene. According to Saterstrom, this figure is based on himself at work in his studio.

In 1924 in Port Gibson, Mississippi, a 15-year-old patient who came in for an eye exam accused Dr. Smith of sexual assault.

According to several newspapers, an angry mob set upon him, taking him to the nearby town of Hermanville, where they nearly hanged him before the local sheriff intervened.

He was arrested and held in a Port Gibson jail cell to await trial. 

This scene is found on the center wall and the wall third from the right.

After his arrest in 1924, Smith waited in jail for several months, never making bond before his trial. Newspapers from this time report that he covered his cell with papers in an act of self-protection from the “dopings” by government officials. He also wrote letters to state and federal representatives asking for protection, claiming innocence, and “retiring” from his role as a “breeder” for the federal government.

Other letters were addressed to Dr. Smith's family. None of these letters were sent, and decades later, Saterstrom found them with the help of Stephen Parks, Mississippi's state librarian, on a visit to Port Gibson. These letters were the only first-person accounts of Dr. Smith's life that the artist was able to access from this time period. 

One month before his criminal trial in 1925, Dr. Smith’s mother was able to arrange a lunacy trial instead. Dr. Smith was declared insane by a jury and was committed to the Mississippi State Insane Hospital. He was never tried criminally. 

A curious figure covered in eyes appears outside the lunacy hearing. The artist was inspired by the Greek mythological figure, Argus, who was a hundred-eyed watchman or protector. 

This scene is found on the wall third from the right.

One night before he was set to leave for the asylum, Dr. Smith escaped his cell, climbing out of the jail.

Various local newspapers report that after leaving the jail, Dr. Smith set out on a journey to Washington, D.C.

Some accounts suggest that he visited the White House and even met with President Coolidge.

The Sheriff of Claiborne County was called to retrieve Dr. Smith one month after his escape. He personally drove Dr. Smith to the Mississippi State Insane Hospital for his admission in 1925, where he would stay for the remainder of his life.

This scene is found on the wall second from the right.

The timeline once again splits, depicting the reunion of the Brandons with Ethel and the kids along the upper panels. In 1925, Ethel’s parents Gerard and Daisy went to Shreveport, and they brought the family back with them to live in Natchez.

According to the artist, after being told her “father had a fugue and lost his way,” Margaret believed him to be physically lost and awaited her father’s return on the curb daily.

Pictures of him were removed from the mantle, and Dr. Smith was never spoken about. 

The lower half of the painting shows the Mississippi State Insane Hospital, known locally as the Old Asylum, where Dr. Smith was admitted in 1925. At its onset in 1855 the Old Asylum was a cutting edge, Kirkbride model of a mental health care institution. It relied on therapeutic design, open spaces, lush gardens, and small patient-to-doctor ratios to be successful.

Offering accessible health care like post-partum care and balanced diets to thousands of patients across Mississippi, many would come for treatment and leave. Others, many of whom did not have another community that could provide care for them, were admitted long-term. 

In the 1920s when Dr. Smith was admitted, the institution had become overcrowded, conditions had deteriorated, and it could no longer offer the quality of care it intended.

Black patients were admitted more regularly by 1870, and the wards were segregated by race and gender. Due to overcrowding and a lack of resources, many patients died from contagious illness outbreaks.  

The artist was not able to access specific files or sources about Dr. Smith’s experience in the Old Asylum, so here, Saterstrom focused on depicting a general context for this location. 

In 1935, all patients of the Old Asylum were moved to the newly constructed Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield. This residential community was designed to be self-sustaining, complete with a farm and large grounds.  

The artist was only able to find one newspaper article that detailed Smith’s experience at Whitfield from his thirty years there. 

With the roof removed, a bird’s eye view reveals scenes from within the rooms of Whitfield. Atop the building, Argus reappears. This time, the mythological figure opens his torso to reveal a series of eyes passing through him.

He gazes down at the hospital below. What do you think he represents here? 

To offer them opportunities to find purpose and contribute to their community at Whitfield, certain patients were permitted to have jobs.

Dr. Smith is seen here trimming hedges. Rumors stated that Dr. Smith may have worked on the grounds crew, at Whitfield. The artist suspects that he also performed eye exams for other patients. 

Over the decades of Dr. Smith’s hospitalization, mental health care and psychiatry were evolving. Treatment at Whitfield included medications, hydrotherapy (pictured left), and occupational therapy methods like weaving (pictured above hydrotherapy).  

Through his research, Saterstrom found an article from 1950 that included a photograph of Dr. Smith working at a loom as part of the occupational therapy program. He was making curtains and sheets for the residents. 

View a reproduction of this newspaper clipping in the nearby section of the exhibition: "Emily Wicke: Weaving Together"

This final scene is found on the last wall, furthest to the right.

The painting's narrative ends with an image of Edelweiss, Margaret’s home in Natchez that Noah Saterstrom would eventually come to know.

Saterstrom’s grandparents stand on the porch, and the artist includes himself in the driver’s seat of his teenage car.  

Finally, graves are shown in the Rose Hill Cemetery at Whitfield, where unclaimed remains of deceased residents were buried. Like at the cemetery at the Old Asylum in Jackson, today no grave markers or records of the burial plots remain.

In 1965, Dr. Smith passed away at Whitfield. He is suspected to be buried in Rose Hill Cemetery.