The Bruce Museum Shows the Work of Master Print Maker ~ Martin Lewis

Written by Hillary Moseley Saturday, 15 October 2011 21:53

Greenwich, Connecticut.- The Bruce Museum is proud to present "The Prints of Martin Lewis: From the Collection of Dr. Dorrance Kelly" on view at the museum until February 26th 2012. Recognized as one of the premier American printmakers of the first half of the 20th century, Martin Lewis (1881-1962) left an indelible mark on the landscape of the art world. Lewis was an acknowledged master of the intaglio techniques of printmaking, experimenting with multiple processes including etching, aquatint, engraving, and drypoint. The exhibition features more than thirty prints and several canceled plates by the artist from the private collection of Dr. Dorrance Kelly of West Redding, Connecticut.

A highly skilled printer, Lewis created magnificent impressions that captured the energy, bustle, and occasional solitude of all aspects of city life in New York. With his move to Connecticut in 1932, Lewis investigated another topic through his printmaking: country life. This firmly entrenched Lewis as a prominent American scene artist, who captured the intersection between the urban and rural environments and shed light on the slowly emerging suburban culture. Martin Lewis was born on June 7, 1881 in Castlemaine, Australia. He was the second of eight children and he had a passion for drawing. 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 Sidney. 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. With the exception of a few years, he spent the rest of his life in and around the city.

His earliest etching dates from 1915 but shows a technical ability that suggests that he had been working in the medium for some time. To back up that feeling, a friend and fellow artist, Edward Hopper, asked him for technical advice on etching in 1915. During these early years, he experimented with different intaglio processes including etching, aquatint, engraving, mezzotint, and drypoint. In 1920, he left for Japan, a turning point in his artistic career. He studied the art and culture of Japan. During his eighteen-month stay, he spent his time painting in both oil and watercolor. He did not work in printmaking again until 1925 when he produced a group of etchings and drypoints depicting Japan. These new prints led him several years later to produce many memorable images of New York City. The period of 1925 through 1935 was his most productive, and he produced eighty-one of the one hundred and forty-eight known prints, including series on Japan and New York. A first solo exhibition in 1929 was successful enough for him to give up commercial work and concentrate entirely on printmaking. With the onset of the Depression however, he was forced to leave the city for four years between 1932 and 1936. When he was finally able to return to the city in 1936, there was no longer a market interested in his work. He died largely forgotten. .


The Bruce Museum was originally built as a private home in 1853 for lawyer, clergyman and historian Francis Lister Hawks. Robert Moffat Bruce (1822-1908), a wealthy textile merchant and member of the New York Cotton Exchange, bought the house and property in 1858. In 1908, Robert Moffat Bruce deeded his property to the Town of Greenwich, stipulating that it be used as “a natural history, historical, and art museum for the use and benefit of the public." The first exhibition ever at the Bruce Museum took place in 1912 and featured works by local artists known as the Greenwich Society of Artists, several of whom were members of the Cos Cob Art Colony. The Museum served as home base for the Greenwich Society of Artists hosting its Annual Exhibition from 1912 through 1926. The Cos Cob School is now well established as an important part of the history of American painting, and it forms the nucleus of the Museum's holdings of painting, watercolors, sketchbooks, and notebooks by such artists as Leonard and Mina Ochtman, George Wharton Edwards, and Hobart Jacobs. Over the years, the community, through its generosity, has built the Museum collection to nearly 15,000 objects representing the arts and sciences. Paralleling an interest in Connecticut painters and their paintings, early directors of the Bruce Museum, such as Ray Owens, Paul Howes, and Jack Clark, pursued the development of the natural sciences, building particular strengths in the mineral and avian collections. In 1992, the Bruce Museum undertook a complete renovation of its 139-year-old building. Reopened in September 1993, the redesigned Bruce is an architectural model of museum quality. In 1998 the Bruce Museum received accreditation from the American Association of Museums, an honor granted to fewer than 5% of all museums. Sitting high on a hill overlooking Greenwich Harbor, the Bruce Museum offers a changing array of exhibitions and educational programs that promote the understanding and appreciation of art and science. Visit the museum's website at ... http://brucemuseum.org

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