Maud Lewis
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Maud Lewis (1903–1970) was a folk artist born in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Maud Lewis was born in South Ohio, Nova Scotia in 1903 and she died in Digby General Hospital, Nova Scotia in 1970. She remains one of Canada's best known and most loved folk artists.
She suffered from disabilities as a result of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and lived most of her life in poverty with her husband in Marshalltown. She began her artistic career by hand-drawing Christmas cards. These proved popular with her husband's customers as he sold fish door to door and encouraged her to begin painting. She used bright colours in her paintings and subjects were often of oxen teams, horses, or cats. All of her paintings are of outdoor scenes. Her house was one-room with a sleeping loft and is now located in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax.
At the age of thirty four, Maud married Everett Lewis. They were poor and lived in a small thirteen foot six inches by twelve foot six inches house. Soon after they were married Maud Lewis accompanied her husband on his daily rounds peddling fish, bringing along Christmas cards that she had drawn. She would sell the cards for twenty five cents each. After some success with this, she started painting on various other surfaces such as pulp boards (beaverboards) , cookie sheets, and masonite. Maud was a compulsive artist and painted on more or less every available surface in their tiny home. It was Everett who encouraged Maud to paint and he bought her her first set of oils.
Most of Maud Lewis' paintings are quite small - often no larger than eight by ten inches, although she is known to have done at least five paintings 24 inches by 36 inches ( John McInnis auction, Amesbury, Mass., May 29th, 2004. Maud's technique consisted of first drawing an outline and then applying paint directly out of the tube. She never mixed colours.
Early Maud Lewis paintings from the 1940's are quite rare. The AGNS does have on display occasionally the Chaplin/Wennerstrom shutters(now part of the Clearwater Fine Foods Inc. collection) . The collection comprises twenty-two exterior house shutters that Maud did in the early 1940's. The work was done for some Americans who owned a cottage on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. Most of the shutters are quite large 5ft x 1ft.6 inches. Maud was paid 70 cents a shutter.
Between 1945-1950, people began to stop at Maud's home and buy her paintings for two or three dollars. Only in the last three or four years of Maud's life did her paintings begin to sell for seven to ten dollars. She achieved national attention as a result of an article in the "Star Weekly" in 1964 and in 1965 she was featured on CBC-TV's Telescope. Unfortunately, her arthritis deprived her from completing many of the orders that resulted from the national exposure. In recent years, her paintings have sold at auction for ever increasing prices. Two of her paintings have sold for more than $16,000. The highest auction prices so far is $22,200.00 for lot 196 "A Family Outing". The painting was sold at a Bonham's auction in Toronto Nov 30,2009.
In the last year of her life, Maud Lewis stayed in one corner of her house, painting as often as she could while traveling back and forth to the hospital.
A large collection of Maud's work can be found in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, which has restored her original house and installed it in the gallery as part of a permanent Maud Lewis exhibit. Most of the Maud Lewis paintings on display are on loan to the AGNS. A steel memorial sculpture based on her house has been erected at the original site of her house in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia. An imitation Maud Lewis house has been built a private museum in Liverpool, Nova Scotia.
Further reading and other media
Maud Lewis is the subject of a book, The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis and three National Film Board of Canada documentaries, Maud Lewis - A World Without Shadows (1997),[1] The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis (1998) and I Can Make Art ... Like Maud Lewis (2005), a short film in which a group of Grade 6 students are inspired by Lewis' work to create their own folk art painting.[2]
In 2009, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in conjunction with Greg Thompson Productions isrgffggfdgjhfyfyugyhgujhgnjpresenting a new Maud Lewis play on stage at the AGNS. A Happy Heart: The Maud Lewis Story was written and produced by Greg Thompson, the same writer and producer who brought Marilyn: Forever Blonde to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in January of 2008. Thompson wrote the one woman play while in Nova Scotia in 2008 and his newest work examines the life and art of Maud Lewis. The play will run until October 25, 2009.
References
- ^ "Maud Lewis: A World Without Shadows" (Requires Adobe Flash). Online documentary. National Film Board of Canada. 1976. Retrieved 18 March 2011.
- ^ Churchill, Jane (2005). "I Can Make Art ... Like Maud Lewis". National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 2009-03-26.