John Frederick Lewis

John Frederick Lewis^[1] RA (London 14 July 1804 – 15 August 1876) was an Orientalist English painter. He specialized in Oriental and Mediterranean scenes and often worked in exquisitely detailed watercolour. He was the son of Frederick Christian Lewis (1779–1856), German engraver and landscape-painter.

The Coffee Bearer (1857)

Lewis lived in Spain between 1832 and 1834. He lived in Cairo between 1841 and 1851, where he made numerous sketches that he turned into paintings even after his return to England in 1851. He lived in Walton-on-Thames until his death.

Lewis became an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1859 and a member (an RA) in 1865.

After being largely forgotten for decades, he became extremely fashionable, and expensive, from the 1970s and good works now fetch prices into the millions of dollars or pounds at auction.

Sketches

In the beys garden

• Head of a Spanish Girl Wearing a Mantilla, ca. 1838, Red and black chalks and Indian ink with watercolors and bodycolours on buff board

• Two Southern Italian Peasants Playing the Bagpipes, 1839–40, Watercolor and bodycolours and black chalk over pencil, on buff paper

References

• See Sources.

Further reading

• Murray, P. & L. Dictionary of art and artists (p. 298). (London: Penguin Books, 1996). ISBN 0-14-051300-0.
• Cornucopia, "Painting the Orient", Issue 45, Spring 2011.

Weeks, Emily M. Cultures Crossed: John Frederick Lewis and the Art of Orientalism (Yale University Press, 2014).

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to John Frederick Lewis.

• Paintings in Museums and Public Art Galleries (artcyclopedia.com).
• John Frederick Lewis Paintings (orientalist-art.org.uk)
• John Frederick Lewis ("Victorian web")
• Self-Censorship in the Harem Paintings of J.F. Lewis
• Visions of the harem (The Guardian, 5 July 2008)