“There’s always something to worry about”
A Maud Lewis letter set to hit the auction block provides insights into her world, and her soul
A recently discovered letter, handwritten on March 19, 1952, is set to hit the auction block at Miller & Miller’s upcoming Canadiana and Folk Art auction.
A recently discovered letter, handwritten on March 19, 1952, is set to hit the auction block at Miller & Miller’s upcoming Canadiana and Folk Art auction. Expected to sell for over $10,000, the letter looks like any other. Over the decades, it could have easily been lost in the shuffle or simply discarded. Somehow, it was saved. Penned on a quartered piece of paper folded into a card, it is addressed to “Eva”. Written with an uncertain hand and rife with grammatical and spelling errors, the letter provides a rare glimpse into the private life of an individual that more and more Canadians have come to know. A typical piece of mail, one might assume, until the paper is unfolded to reveal a vibrant hand-painted harbour scene and the writer’s salutation: “Maude XXX”.
The Canadiana & Folk Art sale on February 11, 2023, features a variety of original works by Canada’s most renowned folk artist: the late Maud Lewis. The hand-painted letter, however, has collectors reeling. Excitement surrounding the works of Maud reached new heights in May 2022 when Miller & Miller Auctions conducted the record-breaking sale of Lewis’ ‘Black Truck’ painting which hammered down at $350,000. The sale drew worldwide attention and established Miller & Miller as a primary source for buying and selling Maud Lewis works.
Back to the letter. Maud’s writing reveals considerable insight into her character and personality. She comments on weather, illness and the cost of living. Living in poverty, with her fish-peddler husband, Everett, in a tiny, two-room, unheated, unelectrified cottage outside the hamlet of Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, Maud bore her lot in life stoically - and, for the most part, cheerfully. Maud’s paintings sustained her and brought her a measure of joy in a severely disadvantaged life.
“What a hard old winter this is,” she writes, and complains: “I wanted to get a new kitchen table…but they wanted $8.25 for one. To (sic) much.”
Conditioned by circumstance to be able to find humour in a hard life (made more difficult by her penny-pinching, cantankerous husband Everett Lewis), she adds: “Everett says he’d eat off a box first than to pay that.”
Care and concern for correspondent Eva’s illness rounds out the letter’s content. Revealing insight into her morose mindstate, she admits: “There’s always something to worry about.”
Wolfville, Nova Scotia’s Alan Deacon discovered the art of Maud Lewis in the early 1960s and has since become known to galleries and collectors as “The Maud Lewis Expert”. Deacon calls the letter “quite a find,” and “very good news.” He adds that the letter, one of very few that exist after Maud Lewis’ death in 1970, is a “good letter, “not just about herself but enquiring about Eva's condition.”
Nova Scotian Lance Woolaver, author of “The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis” uncovers the recipient of the card.
“Eva Gray is Maud's cousin, a teacher, on her mother's side. Maud and Eva grew up in Yarmouth and might have been roughly the same age.”
The harbour scene is painted in watercolour using Maud’s usual primary colours—red, blue, yellow and green. These hues, combined with the flat perspective, are “typical of the artist,” says Alan Deacon.
The habour scene painted on the letter is typical of Maud’s work.
Disabled later in life with arthritis, and, near the end of her life forced to hold her paintbrush with two hands, Maud’s artistic skill (she was almost 50 at the time of composition) in this miniature remains strong and steady. Chosen subjects include outbuildings, a dock, picket fences and a sailing vessel floating on calm water. The strong, fine lines of the boat’s rigging show Maud Lewis at the peak of her powers. Atypically for Lewis, no animal life makes an appearance in this small but profound image.
Of Lewis’s typical overlooking of perspective, and subjects’ realism (especially with respect to her beloved animals), Lance Woolaver comments in his book, The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis:
“Unquestionably she knew what she was doing. When she painted three legs on a cow or eyelashes on oxen, it was not an oversight…these eccentricities are a consistent device she used to create pleasing and humorous works.” He disavows the affection as “a disability,” either artistic or mental.
Maud had learned the fine skill of painting miniatures at her mother, Agnes Dowley’s, kitchen table. Woolaver states:
“Agnes and Maud painted their watercolours on rough paper, the kind that filled students’ unlined scribblers. When Maud recalled her childhood instruction she mentioned using crayons: ‘I used to paint with Crayolas a lot, kind of practicin’ up I guess.”
Sharp-eyed Deacon notes the signature in this early piece. “Note at this early stage in her career, Maud signs off as ‘Maude’”.
xxxxx
During her lifetime, Maud Lewis was virtually unknown as an artist outside of rural Nova Scotia. Over 50 years after her death, she has become a cultural phenomenon. In 2017, one of her paintings titled, “Portrait of Eddie Barnes and Ed Murphy, lobster fishermen, Bay View, N.S”, sold for $45,000. It was found in a Waterloo Region Thrift store, and upon its sale, interest in Lewis’ works began to ramp up. The film “Maudie,” starring Sally Hawkins as Maud and Ethan Hawke as Everett, accelerated the excitement and intrigue surrounding Lewis. In 2021, several Maud Lewis originals were sold at a London, England auction house fetching £36,000 and setting the stage for Miller & Miller’s recording breaking sale in May 2022.
Maud Lewis scholars estimate that the number of Maud Lewis completed paintings counts only in the thousands. Only a handful of her early cards have been uncovered. Maud’s letter to Eva, a primary feature of Miller & Miller’s February sale, is a rarity and serves serendipitously to allow her admirers further insight into her world, her works, and her soul.
By Nancy Silcox
Nancy Silcox, of New Hamburg, is a former teacher and university counsellor. She has written 14 books, most of them historical biographies.
AUCTION DETAILS:
Canadiana & Folk Art
February 11, 2023. 9am EST.
Did you enjoy this story? Feel free to share it using the links below: