|
About Edmund D. Lewis
Lewis, from Philadelphia, studied under German-born Paul Weber (1823-1916), formerly court painter to the Grand-Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, who also taught William Trost Richards, Thomas Moran and others. Lewis began exhibiting at the age of nineteen, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and continued to do so until 1891. An early work, The Queen of the Antilles, was an emulation of Frederic Edwin Church’s Heart of the Andes (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Earl Shinn (pseudo. Edward Strahan) admired the luminous work, in which every object seems to have been caressed by light. The Pennsylvania Academy has Lewis’s Lake Willoughby, a vast 80-inch canvas signed and dated 1867. Lewis became an incredibly successful and prolific painter, then turned his attention from oil painting to watercolor. Later he devoted himself to collecting decorative art: tapestries, furniture, objets d’art, precious ceramics, as well as paintings of old and modern masters. The wealthy artist had two adjoining homes built on South 22nd Street in Philadelphia to show off his collection and to entertain members of fashionable society.
The artist’s sketchbook from 1871, the year Along the Susquehanna River was executed, proves that he made his way up the Susquehanna River, in the vicinity of Harrisburg, stopping at Marietta, Duncannon and Clarks Ferry. One of the outstanding features of this painting is the clarity of form, which does not exclude a pleasing softness, and this links Lewis to the Luminist tradition. Throughout there is a decorative use of small, delicate brushstrokes that enliven the surface. One should notice the introduction of pure color — touches of vivid green and violet in the lower left-hand corner, and there is a peach tone in the river itself to indicate reflections of clouds. In the luminous sky there is an indication of moisture, especially toward the right. The full range of values, which is lacking in later impressionist paintings, always helps to emphasize solid form and here it seems to define the crispness of the air. The viewer’s eye is led at an ever so slight diagonal into the distance, while the focal point is a church steeple, around which huddle the village houses. One of the figures in the tiny canoe, rendered in bright red, provides a striking color accent. |
Paintings by Edmund D. Lewis
| Along the Susquehanna River |
| oil on canvas: 9 3/4 x 15 1/4 inches |
| signed and dated 1871: lower right |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
|
