The Old Print Shop

MARTIN LEWIS - RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION

ABOUT MARTIN LEWIS - RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION


Martin Lewis (1881-1962)

 

Retrospective exhibition in our New York gallery.
Featuring over 100 prints plus over 30 drawings, watercolors and oil paintings.
April 14 to May 14, 2016

 

Martin Lewis was born on June 7, 1881 in Castlemaine, Australia. He was the son of a gold-mining engineer who had emigrated from Pembrokeshire, Wales, to Australia during the Australian gold rush. His mother was Victoria Caroline Spice from Melbourne. Lewis was the second of eight children. It was while he was attending the local technical school that he first studied drawing with Thomas Fisher Levick. At the age of fifteen he left home and traveled in New South Wales and New Zealand, working as a posthole digger and a merchant seaman before settling into a Bohemian community outside of Sydney. Two of his drawings were published in a radical Sydney newspaper, the Bulletin. He also studied with Julian Ashton at the Art Society's School in Sydney. Ashton, a famous painter, was also one the first Australian artists to take up printmaking. Lewis visited his family in Castlemaine for the last time in 1900 and then left for the United States. His first known job after arriving in the United States was painting stage decorations for the McKinley Presidential Campaign of 1900.

Little is known of his early years in this country; however, by 1909 he was living and working in New York City. In 1910 he traveled to London and visited his brother, Llewellyn, and an uncle in Wales. While there he met Esta Varez, an amateur photographer and singer. She returned with him to New York City where they were involved with a circle of friends that included artists and writers. In 1920 Varez and Lewis separated. Varez would later marry one of Lewis’ good friends, Dudley Nichols, who would become a famous movie director. Because of his breakup with Varez, his dissatisfaction with commercial art, and his interest in Japanese art and culture, he left New York and moved to Japan in 1920. His intentions were to move there permanently; however, he was unable to master the Japanese language or to make a living, so after a few years he returned to New York City.