# Michael Duncan Smither artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/michael-duncan-smither/
Profile generated: 2026-08-24T20:32:43.244Z
Quality: medium confidence, thin sources

## Artist identity

- Nationality: New Zealand
- Common media: Painting

## Portrait

![Michael Duncan Smither](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/SmitherM.jpg/1280px-SmitherM.jpg)
Manymanydogs · CC BY-SA 4.0
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SmitherM.jpg

## About Michael Duncan Smither

Michael Duncan Smither, also identified publicly as Michael Smither, is a New Zealand painter and composer born in 1939. The collected authority record and encyclopedia entry agree on those basic identity details, while linked authority pages provide established identifiers for entity matching. The available source pack does not document a named movement, school, detailed chronology, characteristic subjects, or a verified list of series, so this profile avoids assigning those labels. Collectors encounter Smither's name in auction contexts: Appraisily's directory input associates 172 records with the artist. That volume provides a potential record set for comparison, but it does not by itself establish authorship, medium, condition, or value for an individual object. Reliable matching should use the full name, the shorter form Michael Smither, the 1939 birth year, New Zealand context, and authority identifiers, followed by a close review of relevant lot cataloguing and images.

## Common works and media

Painting is the only visual-art category directly supported by the collected biographical excerpts. The source pack does not establish recurring subjects, specific paint types, supports, print editions, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, posters, or named series. Objects offered under Smither's name should therefore be described from their own cataloguing and physical evidence rather than assigned a typical medium or subject from this research alone. His parallel identification as a composer is biographical context, not evidence that musical material is a common auction category.

## Market and appraisal context

The source pack establishes Smither as a New Zealand painter and shows that Appraisily associates 172 auction records with this artist entry, but it provides no retrievable lot-level evidence or major-auction-house commentary. For appraisal, candidate records should be reviewed individually for the catalogued artist name, work type, dimensions, date, sale date, realized price, and attribution language. The present research does not support claims about price direction, rarity, preferred subjects, condition effects, provenance premiums, or edition hierarchy. A defensible comparison therefore depends on confirming that each candidate lot concerns the same Michael Smither and resembles the object being appraised as closely as the available cataloguing permits.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine artist-identity research with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. This profile distinguishes verified identity facts from market details that still require lot-level confirmation.

## Sources

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6834484
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Smither
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500063168
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/96111642/
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2005014105
- Deutsche Nationalbibliothek: https://d-nb.info/gnd/130140058
- ISNI: https://isni.org/isni/0000000114525981
- RKD: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/73534
- Appraisily: https://appraisily.com/artist/michael-duncan-smither/
- Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SmitherM.jpg