Harrison Smith Hartley

Harrison Smith Hartley was a commercial artist active in Missouri in the early 20th century. He was born on November 9, 1888, in Savannah, Missouri. He attended high school in Savannah, and after graduating, he drew cartoons for the Savannah Reporter for a year. Around 1910, Hartley moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and attended the Kansas City Art Institute for two years. He then attended the Art Institute of Chicago, and after that was a cartoonist with J.N. Darling in Des Moines, Iowa.

Hartley returned to Kansas City in the 1920s to work as an art director for the Greiner-Fifield Lithographing Company. In 1933, he moved to St. Joseph, Missouri, where he worked for a printing and lithography company. Beginning in the 1940s, Hartley worked as a freelance commercial artist. He also had illustrations published in the Saturday Evening Post, and watercolors published  in the magazine Ford Times.

During his career, Hartley won several awards, including from the Huntington Hartford Foundation and the Platte Purchase award in St. Joseph. 

In 1940, Hartley headed the committee in St. Joseph to find artists for a special exhibition held in November 1940 in commemoration of a nationwide observance of Art Week. Similar exhibitions were held in St. Louis, Kansas City, Cape Girardeau and Joplin. He served as the Art Week director for the state of Missouri in 1945. 

Hartley served as the chairman of the St. Joseph chapter of the American Artists Professional League in 1940. 

Harrison Smith Hartley died on November 2, 1971, in St. Joseph.