Smith began his art training drawing from casts with Theodore J. Keane in Toledo in 1931. Later he entered the School of the Toledo Museum of Art and attended the University of Toledo. While in School he worked as a newspaper illustrator and cartoonist for the News-Bee.
In 1937 he went to New York where he got a job ghost writing the comic strip "Polly and Her Pals". Other work followed including illustrations for Cosmopolitan and Saturday Evening Post as well as illustrations for books on the orient and on Chinese mythology.
During World War II Smith was recruited by the OSS and sent to China. In 1949 he went to Paris where he met and married the artist Ferol Stratton. The couple remained in Paris until 1951 when they returned to New York. In 1952 exhibitions of his work were held at the Toledo Museum and at the Philadelphia Sketch Club. In 1956 he moved to Pineville, PA and in 1959 he travelled to the Soviet Union as a State Department emissary.
In 1960 he served as president of an exhibiting group "Gallery Ten" in New Hope, PA which included Nicholas Angelo, Chen-Chi, Avel DeKnight, Adolf Dehn, Jacob Landau, Emil Laugier, Peter Raone, Don Shure and Gerd Utescher.
Carl Sandburg, a close friend of Smith's, described his work as follows:
Flowers and promises, rock and rookeries, horses of galloping anxiety and houses whose walls hide characters in search of themselves, faces of gnomes saying much of history is an alley crap game, shadow feet moving towards fables just around the next corner, gnarled fingers feeling in pockets for a time-table and bus fare, people and meditations placed in a quiet whispering gallery--these linger with me from the graphic art of my friend Bill Smith.
Since 1972 Smith has designed nine commemorative stamps for the US Postal Service. He also served as president of the American Watercolor Society.
Smith nominated to the NAD by Frederic Whitaker. To qualify as Academician, Smith submitted the watercolor "Enterprize".
Smith also submitted the diploma portrait of Adolph Dehn to the NAD, in the form of a drawing. Dehn also submitted a portfolio of prints to qualify in the graphic arts class.
