Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/195

Rh by portraits of dogs and horses, and a picture of a monkey who has broken a mirror in trying to get at its image in the glass. This was called ‘Fatal Curiosity,’ and was praised by Stothard. His first large picture, ‘Deer-shooting at Belhus, Essex,’ was bought by Hurst and Robinson, and he soon attracted the attention of Northcote, who purchased some of his sketches of animals, and introduced him to Sir Thomas Lawrence, by whom he was engaged to put in backgrounds and animals for his portraits. Six studies of wild animals, etched and mezzotinted by himself, were published by W. B. Cooke of Soho Square about 1825. These were afterwards the subject of eloquent praise by Mr. Ruskin (see Pre-Raphaelitism, 1851). He was at this time employed by George IV on deer and sporting subjects at Windsor. In both 1824 and 1825 he exhibited at the Royal Academy a picture of a lion and lioness, and in 1826 his father published ‘Twelve Etchings of Domestic Subjects,’ &c., by him. These were pure etchings, without mezzotint, and included some of his studies at Windsor. At this time he had a preference for water-colour, and in 1827 was elected an associate of the (now Royal) Society of Painters in Water-colours, sending to their exhibition of this year two drawings of ‘Vanquished Lions’ and ‘A Dying Lioness.’ Among his pictures at the Royal Academy this year was an ‘Eagle disturbed at his Prey by a Lioness,’ but after this time, though he continued to send to the Royal Academy exhibitions, his contributions were for many years of inferior importance to the drawings he sent to the Water-colour Society, of which he was elected a full member in 1829.

In 1827 he left his father's house and went to live at 21 St. John's Wood Road, and about this time took a tour in Tyrol and Italy, the effects of which were visible in his exhibited works of 1828 and following years till 1831, when his drawings of ‘Peasant Studies in the Highlands of Scotland’ showed that he had been to North Britain. In 1832 he exhibited his most important drawing of this period, ‘Highland Hospitality,’ which was engraved in mezzotint by William Giles. Though he never lost his love of animals, he had now abandoned his exclusive aim as an animal painter, and the whole scope of his art was altered and developed by his visit to Spain (1832–4). His drawings for the next three or four years were devoted to Spanish subjects, remarkable for their fine style and colouring. They included studies of the people, street scenes, church interiors, bullfights, and some incidents of the Carlist war. Perhaps the most important of the last class was ‘A Spy of the Christino Army brought before the Carlist general-in-chief, Zumalcarragui,’ exhibited at the Water-colour Society in 1837. It is engraved (on wood) in the ‘Art Journal’ for 1858. In 1838 he was in Paris, where he executed ‘Murillo painting the Virgin in the Franciscan Convent at Seville,’ and ‘The Pillage of a Convent by Guerilla Soldiers,’ both of which were exhibited in that year. These drawings, with one of a ‘Devotional Procession in Toledo,’ 1841, may be said to mark the end of his Spanish period. During this time his contributions to the Royal Academy were confined to studies of single figures. The fame of ‘Spanish’ Lewis, as he was then called, was increased by the publication of two series of lithographs, ‘Sketches and Drawings of the Alhambra,’ published 1835, and ‘Lewis's Sketches of Spain and Spanish Character,’ 1836, in the first of which he was assisted by J. D. Harding [q. v.], who drew some of the subjects on the stone. In 1838 he appeared as the lithographer of another man's drawings, in a volume uniform with his own, ‘Illustrations of Constantinople,’ by Coke Smith. Many of his Spanish drawings were engraved on a large scale. (For a list of his engraved works, which included some book illustrations in Finden's ‘Illustrations of Byron’ and elsewhere, see, Hist. of the Old Water-colour Society, ii. 139.)

Between 1838 and 1850 Lewis made no sign as an artist, except by two drawings sent to the society's exhibition in 1841, one of which has been mentioned. The other was an important drawing of ‘Easterday at Rome.’ He appears to have suffered from ill-health, and to have resided at Rome for some time, but he quitted that city for travels towards the East in 1839. In 1840 he went to Corfu and Albania, made sketches in Janina and the Pindus, nearly died of fever in the Gulf of Corinth, but went on to Athens and Constantinople, where he met and bid a last farewell to Wilkie, who died on the voyage home. The summer of 1842 was spent in Asia Minor and the winter at Cairo. In 1843 he made excursions to Mount Sinai, and up the Nile into Nubia, &c. In 1844 Thackeray, an old friend of his, visited him in Cairo, and found him established in the Arab quarter in the most complete oriental fashion. But even Cairo was too civilised for him at that time, and he preferred the life of the desert, under the tents and the stars (, Cornhill to Cairo, 1891, pp. 324–330, with a humorous portrait of the painter).

In 1848 the name of Lewis, who had contributed nothing to the exhibitions of