Three Black Cats
12" x 14", by Maud Lewis
Sold at Auction in 2007 for
$ 10,178 (£ 5140)

fingers, hunched her shoulders and caused her chin to be permanently pressed into her chest. As a child she was unaccepted and even taunted by her schoolmates, and at the age of 14 she dropped out of school, having completed only grade 5. She continued living with her financially struggling parents, and her mother taught her to help pay the bills by painting Christmas

cards to sell to their neighbors.

  When Maud was in her early thirties both of her parents died, and she went to live with an aunt in Digby, Nova Scotia. It was there that she met Everett Lewis, a poor fisherman who had advertised for a housekeeper for his tiny, one-room cottage without plumbing or electricity in nearby Marshalltown. She began a relationship with Everett, married him in 1938, and began painting every available surface in his tiny cottage with brightly colored birds, butterflies and flowers.

  Advancing arthritis soon made it difficult for Maud to keep house effectively, and she began to help pay the bills by sitting in the front window of the cottage painting small pictures to sell to tourists and passers-by in the street. When her paintings began to bring in a few dollars, Everett assumed the role of her manager. He scrounged up paints of all kinds for her to use, and substrate materials that included wallpaper, cardboard and particle board, and he haggled with customers over the prices of her paintings, which never exceeded ten dollars in her entire lifetime.

 White Cat And Butterflies
12" x 14", by Maud Lewis
Sold at Auction in 2007 for
$ 8,327 (£ 4206)

  For the next two and a half decades Maud Lewis continued in this pattern

of existence, struggling to survive and selling her small paintings to help make ends meet . Over the

Covered Bridge in Winter
11" x 13", by Maud Lewis
Sold at Auction in 2004 for
$ 3,247 (£ 1829)

years the number of paintings she had sold grew into the hundreds and perhaps even the thousands. As she continued to paint and struggle with her many hardships she was unaware that her paintings were becoming quite widely known. People liked their bright colors, their cheerful disposition and their simple style, often referred to as "child-like".

  In 1965 the Moncton Times published an article about Maud Lewis and later that year the CBC Television Network produced and aired a documentary about her life and her work. The Toronto Star also published an illustrated article about her in its national magazine, The Star Weekly. The publicity created a healthy demand for Maud's work and for the first time in her life she found she could sell her paintings almost as fast as she could paint them. She was even commissioned by the White House to do two paintings for President Nixon, and legend has it that Lewis, unaware of or unimpressed by who she was dealing with, accepted on condition that she be paid up front.

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