Walter Granville-Smith grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and there attended the Newark Academy. He received his first instruction in painting from a Dr. David McClure, then studied for five years with Walter Satterlee in New York. In later years Granville-Smith recalled that Charles C. Curran, Elliott Daingerfield, and Frank De Haven were among his fellow students at Satterlee's; that would date his arrival there to about 1884, when he was just fourteen. He also attended the Art Students League, presumably after the period with Satterlee. At the league he studied with J. Carroll Beckwith and Willard Metcalf, who taught there in 1891.
Granville-Smith began his career as a magazine illustrator, working for the second incarnation of Godey's Ladies Book and for Scribner's, Harper's, and Century. He was especially noted for his pioneering work in color. In this period he still used his birth name, signing either as W. G. Smith or Walter G. Smith. Later he made the hyphenation of his middle and last names his legal surname.
In 1896 Granville-Smith began summering regularly on Fire Island, off the Long Island coast. Eventually he acquired a home in Bellport, Long Island. The south shore of Long Island and its barrier beaches became favorite subjects of Granville-Smith's landscape and marine paintings. In 1897 he made an extended tour of Europe, visiting Holland, Belgium, and most certainly France, where he was much impressed with the work of Claude Monet.
It was at about this time that Granville-Smith began to give up illustration work and turn his full attention to landscape painting. His debut in the Academy annual exhibition of 1900 was auspicious: he won the third Julius Hallgarten Prize. He would also receive the Academy's George Inness Gold Medal in 1908; its Andrew Carnegie Prize in the winter exhibition of 1926; and its Benjamin Altman Prize in the annuals of 1929 and 1933.
Granville-Smith was an active member of the New York art community. His most prominent positions were with the Salmagundi Club, where he served as vice- president and, from 1924 to 1926, as president. He also served a three-year term on the Academy Council, from 1920 to 1923.
