EDMUND DARCH LEWIS

Edmund Darch Lewis was born in Philadelphia, where at the age of fifteen he studied with Paul Weber, who also taught Edward Moran, William Trost Richards, and William Haseltine. Lewis became one of the most popular landscape painters in Philadelphia during the late 19th Century. His early works, chiefly scenes of the Lehigh, Susquehana, and Wissihickon Rivers of Pennsylvania, were in great demand. He exhibited his work at the National Academy of Design, the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, and the Boston Athenaeum. Wealthy and admired, he entertained in a grand style in his opulent Philadelphia home, surrounded by an extensive collection of antique furniture, china and decorative arts.

Like many Philadelphians, Lewis often spent his summers in Rhode Island. As a result, the Narragansett Bay and its coastline inspired many of his most widely acclaimed marine scenes. By the mid 1870s, he had turned increasingly to watercolor shoreline views of yachting from Cape May, New Jersey to Narragansett and Newport, Rhode Island.