Art by Everett
Maud Lewis’s husband copied her work, sometimes forged her name
Miller & Miller’s February 9th auction of Post-War Canadian Folk Art contains a selection of works by Everett Lewis.
So much has been written about Maud Lewis, Canada’s famous Maritime folk artist. Far less has been written about her husband Everett Lewis, whose reputation was always tied to his wife’s fame and talent and not always in a favourable way.
As paintings by Everett have come out of the woodwork over the years – a few falsely signed ‘Maud Lewis’ by Everett himself – stories have surfaced fuelling discussions on his motivations and his abilities, while values for his artwork have increased – never near Maud’s level, but substantially more than his original prices.
In its February 9th Postwar Canadian Folk Art Sale, Miller & Miller Auctions features several works by Everett Lewis. These include an original christmas card (lot 26), variations of ‘Two Oxen in Winter’ (lot 27, 28 with lot 27 signed “Maud Lewis”), and an early and later version of Oxen in Spring (lot 29, 30). Maud’s influence on Everett’s style is unquestionable.
The above works by Everett Lewis are included in Miller & Miller’s February 9th auction of Post-War Canadian Folk Art.
Maud Lewis died in 1970. She had lived in poverty, crippled and twisted by rheumatoid arthritis, yet she managed to paint cheerful and colourful paintings of her favourite subjects and Maritime scenes. Everett was 77 when she died and was known to be miserly and distrustful. Despite having accumulated a reasonable amount of money from Maud’s increasingly-popular paintings sold at roadside outside their tiny Marshalltown house, they never had electricity or indoor plumbing. No money was ever spent on anything that might have made their lives easier.
And once Maud was gone, the money trail essentially evaporated and Everett was left to his own devices.
Alan Deacon, a renowned Maud Lewis expert who lives in Nova Scotia, believes Maud likely never charged more than $10 for a painting. Early prices were often around $2 and in the 1940s even less. Deacon says an American family with a cottage in the area paid her to paint 22 of their exterior shutters for 70 cents apiece. In 1965 when Maud finally found fame, prices for her paintings increased from $4.50 to $5. Some people refused to pay it.
When Maud grew ill and died, Everett started painting, copying Maud’s style. He occasionally forged her signature instead of signing his own name. Some unsuspecting buyers were taken in by the forgeries, thinking they were getting an original Maud Lewis.
Edward Ross was one of them.
Ross, now 82 and living in northeastern Ontario, remembers a trip he took in 1969 with his then-wife Diana. They went to visit his parents and sister who lived in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. His mother had heard about Maud and talked them into driving to nearby Marshalltown. She encouraged her son, who was 26 then, to buy a few of her paintings.
When they arrived at the tiny house, Everett invited them inside. Maud was ill and in the Digby hospital at the time and would die the following summer. Everett proudly showed them a guest book with signatures of people from all over the world who’d been to the house. Ross said he wanted to buy two of Maud’s paintings, so Everett went up a small staircase and brought down two pieces, but they were unsigned (his mother had forewarned him not to buy anything unsigned). When Ross insisted on signed paintings, Everett went outside to a shed and brought back two other paintings, this time signed by Maud – one featuring three kittens and the other with two oxen – favourite subjects of Maud’s. Everett asked $20 apiece, double what Maud had been asking. “In 1969 forty dollars was a fair amount of money,” notes Ross, but he bought them anyway. “We thought they might be worth money someday. I thought it could turn out to be a good investment.”
Pictured above are the two “Maud” works that Edward Ross purchased directly from Everett Lewis in 1969. Unbeknownst to Edward, the paintings were actually forgeries crafted by Everett himself.
Before they left, Ross asked Everett if he would pose for a picture with the two women. When they drove away, Ross remembers looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing Everett waving, with a big smile on his face. “He was probably saying, ‘see ya later sucker’.”
Above is the photo Edward Ross took of his former wife (left) and his sister (right) with Everett Lewis, taken after they purchased two forged works.
Ross has had the paintings all this time, but he recently learned from Deacon they were not in fact done by Maud, but by Everett himself. “At first I was flabbergasted and disappointed,” he says. “I would have loved to have had Maud Lewis’s, but I’m now 82 and at an age where it doesn’t really bother me. I figure I’m not the only one who was taken by Everett, plus I’m sure they’re worth more now than the $40 I paid for them.”
Maud Lewis's "Two Oxen in Winter" was one of the images Everett frequently replicated. Maud’s example shown on the left above sold for $38,350 at Miller & Miller Auctions. Everett’s copy, on the right, is included as lot 28 in the upcoming auction at Miller & Miller.
After Maud had died, Everett was reportedly being coached on his painting skills around the mid-1970s by a man named Chris Huntington, who had just moved from Maine to Nova Scotia. He was a former curator of Maine’s Colby College Museum of Art and later owned an antique business there. Everett had found himself a skilled and knowledgeable teacher. “Huntington was the main driving force behind the contemporary folk art movement in Nova Scotia,” says Deacon. And while Everett continued to paint, and improve, in Deacon’s opinion he never became as good as Maud. Everett was essentially a copycat, albeit a pretty decent one.
The above works, offered as lot 29 and 30 in the upcoming auction, show Everett’s improvement before and after learning from Chris Huntington.
“Everett wasn’t the only person imitating Maud either, but clearly he was using Maud as his inspiration,” says Deacon. “But there are awful Everetts and better Everetts.”
Everett was cagey too, according to Deacon. People continued to stop by the Marshalltown house hoping to buy her paintings. If they asked where Maud was, Everett would say she’s away. “Well, she was more than away, she was six feet under” says Deacon. “He was a strange man but not a stupid man.”
Everett had originally met Maud through an ad he’d posted looking for a housekeeper. Maud answered it, but she insisted they be wed if they were to live together. When Maud died they’d been married 32 years. Ironically, it was Maud who became the breadwinner and Everett the housekeeper.
Lance Woolaver in his book The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis sums it up this way:
“For all of Everett’s faults he was a true companion. Not only did he take care of the house, at least to his own standards, he kept the fire going, tended the garden and prepared their meals at the end of the day. He may have been drunk occasionally, he frequently lied and he exaggerated in order to put himself in a favourable light. Nevertheless, he made it possible for Maud to do what she loved best: paint as much as she wished as often as she could.”
The above work was created by Everett, despite the “Maud Lewis” signature in the lower right corner. It is offered as lot 27 in the upcoming auction.
In the 2016 movie Maudie, about their lives, Everett was portrayed in a less than favourable light, to put it mildly. But like Woolaver’s description, Deacon leans towards a less toxic version of Everett and acknowledges the mutual dependence between him and Maud. But Everett was also known to have a wandering eye and local women learned to keep their distance, according to Deacon. He was also undeniably cheap and known to hide his money around the house, not trusting banks.
Deacon says at one time Everett had to go into the hospital and brought a suitcase with him. Nurses figured it contained his clothing, but when they saw inside it was full of cash. The hospital had to hire a security guard for the duration of his stay.
Sadly and paradoxically, Everett died on New Year’s Day 1979 during a scuffle at his house with an intruder who had broken in to steal his money.
By Diane Sewell
Diane Sewell has been a writer for more than 25 years, producing feature stories for some of the country’s top newspapers and consumer magazines, as well as client newsletters and commissioned books.
Sale Information:
Post-War Canadian Folk Art
February 9, 2025 | 9am EST
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