Buying paintings from Everett Lewis 50 years ago
And helping him write an ad looking for a wife to replace Maud
Annie Farrell, now in her 70s, vividly remembers stopping at the roadside stand outside the late folk artist Maud Lewis’s tiny house in Marshalltown and meeting her husband Everett Lewis, who had just started selling his own paintings, capitalizing on the growing interest his late wife had attracted and definitely copying her style.
Annie was in her mid-20s at the time and was travelling with her young son and her parents, all of them in a camper. It was the early 1970s. They were living in New York City and Annie would regularly head up to Nova Scotia since she had friends outside Digby and loved the area.
“I always had an appreciation for art, but I really fell in love with folk art,” she says. “I can ‘t tell you how many folk artists we met up there in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.”
Maud Lewis, the renowned Maritime folk artist, died in the summer of 1970. Crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and dependent on her husband Everett for her care and everything domestic, she became a prolific self-taught artist who painted naive and colourful Maritime scenes which became increasingly popular once word of her work and her situation were publicized in the media in 1965. (A world record was set in 2022 for a Maud Lewis when the painting Black Truck - once traded for a few grilled cheese lunches – brought CA$350,000 at a Miller & Miller auction.)
Maud Lewis (1903-1970) hard at work in the tiny Marshalltown home she shared with husband Everett Lewis.
Back in the days when Maud’s paintings had been selling for $5 and $10, Annie remembers pulling up at the roadside stand outside their house and there was Everett selling his own paintings. She doesn’t recall seeing any of Maud’s still around.
That day, Everett was also in the process of trying to write an ad looking for another wife (which is how he met Maud originally), but he was illiterate and asked if they would help him write it, which they did.
“I just thought he was super cool,” says Annie, who also remembers him ogling her beautiful mother who apparently looked like the actress Doris Day and was very well endowed.
Annie bought three paintings from Everett that day and went back over the years at least three more times, buying more of his work. She often gave his paintings away as gifts to friends and recalls that, like Maud’s, they only cost between $5 and $10 back then. “I also spent a lot of time in his home, which was all painted inside by her. It was the size of a shed.”
Consignor Annie Farrell is pictured above with Everett Lewis during one of her visits to his home to purchase paintings.
Around the time the 2016 movie Maudie was being made, starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke, Annie spoke with the producers and told them about her encounters with Everett. In the movie Everett was portrayed in an unfavourable light, to say the least, but Annie’s personal encounters with him were always friendly. “I never got any vibes from him that were anything but positive. But people can be that way even when they are abusive to their partners. Everett was abusive to Maud, we now know, but he was always very friendly to us because we were buying his paintings,” she says. “Why would he be any other way?”
The three paintings she bought at that first encounter with Everett will now be sold at Miller & Miller’s Post-War Canadian Folk Art sale on the evening of Oct. 9, 2025.
Lot 80, featuring Rabbit & Deer, is expected to fetch CA$2,000 to $2,500. Lot 81, Two Black Cats, is estimated at CA$5,000 to $7,000. Lot 82, Ploughing Scene, considered by some to be Everett’s best work, is estimated at CA$6,000 to $9,000.
On occasion, Everett was known to sign Maud’s name to his own paintings, assuming they’d be more desirable that way. Sadly, a few people were taken in, including one unsuspecting buyer who agreed to tell his personal story of how it unfolded to The Miller Times earlier this year.
Annie Farrell, who now lives in Westchester County in New York State, is in the process of downsizing and has decided it’s time to pass on her cherished Everett paintings. “I wanted them to go to someone who would appreciate them as much as I have. I do think they’ll be appreciated more in Canada. They do belong back in Canada.”
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
October 9, 2025 | 9am EST
A Miller & Miller Online Webcast Auction
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