Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/196

Rh the society since 1841, and had given no reasons for the neglect, was withdrawn from the list of members, but on a promise to conform to the rules he was re-elected a member. He did not contribute again, however, till 1850, when he sent a picture of ‘The Hhareem,’ which created a sensation.

This was the first of the drawings of his last or ‘oriental’ period, in which he developed a new style of manipulation, very minute in touch but extremely broad in effect, and, with extreme elaboration of detail and a brilliant complexity of light and shade, retaining all his old mastery of draughtsmanship and fine feeling for colour. The novelty of the first drawings in this style was emphasised by the new spirit in which his subjects were treated—the spirit, not of a traveller in search of the picturesque, but one who by a long sojourn in a strange country had become intimate with the character of the inhabitants and familiar with their mode of life.

In 1851 he returned to England, and after a short stay at 6 Upper Hornton Villas, Campden Hill, he married and settled at ‘The Holme’ at Walton-on-the-Thames, where he resided for the remainder of his life, working out the result of his eastern studies with endless patience and consummate skill. In 1852 appeared his second Egyptian drawing, ‘An Arab Scribe, Cairo,’ a work of distinct character and high finish; and though he did not send anything to the next exhibition of the Water-colour Society, he became again an annual exhibitor in 1854, when he also made his reappearance at the Royal Academy. The drawings of ‘Camels and Bedouins,’ 1854, and ‘The Well in the Desert’ and ‘The Greeting in the Desert,’ 1855, with their truthful representation of Arab life in the desert, then a novelty in art, and by their masterly rendering of shade and sunshine, greatly increased his fame. In 1856 Lewis was elected president of the Water-colour Society (in place of Copley Fielding, who had died in the previous year), and sent a drawing in body-colour to its exhibition—‘A Frank Encampment in the Desert of Mount Sinai,’ 1842—which drew from Mr. Ruskin this notable encomium: ‘I have no hesitation in ranking it among the most wonderful pictures in the world; nor do I believe that, since the death of Paul Veronese, anything has been painted comparable to it in its own line’ (Notes on some of the Principal Pictures, &c., 1856).

In 1858 Lewis, finding that oil pictures paid better than water-colours, resigned his presidency and membership of the Water-colour Society, and set himself to win the honours of the Royal Academy, of which he was elected an associate in the following year, and a full member in 1865. In 1866 he exhibited his diploma picture, ‘The Door of a Café in Cairo,’ and of the rest of his life the main record is to be found in the catalogues of the Royal Academy. The pictures of this period were founded on his Eastern sketches, and fully sustained, if they did not materially add to, his reputation. In 1876 he retired from the Academy, and he died at Walton-on-Thames on 15 Aug. in the same year. He was buried at Frimley, Surrey.

The works remaining in his possession at his death were sold at Christie's in May 1877. Several of his works in water-colour, chiefly studies and sketches, are in the South Kensington Museum. A set of over sixty small studies from the old masters, with a view of the Tribune at Florence, are in the National Gallery of Scotland. They were purchased by the Royal Scottish Academy in 1853, in which year Lewis was made an honorary member of that institution.

 LEWIS, JOYCE or JOCASTA (d. 1557), martyr, was only daughter of Thomas Curzon of Croxall, Staffordshire, by Anne, daughter of Sir John Aston of Tixall in the same county. She married, first, Sir George Appleby, in Leicestershire, and, after his death at the battle of Pinkie in 1547, Thomas Lewis, who had acquired part of the manor of Mancetter, Warwickshire, during the reign of Edward VI. For a time she was a strict catholic, but having been attracted towards protestantism by the death of the martyr Lawrence Saunders in 1555, the impression was confirmed by the teaching of a neighbour, John Glover, brother of Robert Glover (d. 1555) [q. v.] Her irreverent behaviour in church was made the subject of complaint to the Bishop of Lichfield, and he sent a citation which, however, Lewis is said to have forced the official to eat. The bishop bound the husband in 100l. to bring his wife up for trial in a month, which he did in spite of intercession from friends. Mrs. Lewis was detained in prison for a year, and burnt at Lichfield 18 Dec. 1557: she was accompanied to the stake by Augustine Bernher [q. v.] She left two sons by her first husband. A tablet to the memory of Joyce Lewis and Robert Glover was erected in Mancetter Church in 1833. 