Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis (14 June 1881 – 22 February 1962) was an Australian-born American etcher.

Early life Lewis was born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia on 14 June 1881. He studied with Julian Ashton at the Art Society's School in Sydney. Ashton, a famous painter, was also one of the first Australian artists to take up printmaking. By 1909, Lewis was living in New York, where he found work in commercial illustration. His earliest known etching is dated 1915. However, the level of skill in this piece suggests he had been working in the medium for some time previously. Japan In 1920, after the breakup of a romance,

New York In 1924, he returned to etching and produced most of his well-known works between 1925 and 1935 During the Depression, however, he was forced to leave the city for four years between 1932 and 1936 and move to Newtown, Connecticut. His work from this period includes a number of rural, night-time and winter scenes in this area and nearby Sandy Hook. When Lewis was able to return to the New York City in 1936, there was no longer a market interested in his work. He and lithographer George Miller organized a printmaking school in New York. He taught printmaking at the Art Students League of New York from 1944 until his retirement in 1952. Lewis died largely forgotten in 1962.

Legacy Lewis's print, Shadow Dance, sold for $50,400 at the Scenes of the City: Prints, Drawings & Paintings of New York 1900–2000 auction in New York in October 2010, setting a record price for the artist at auction.

The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, staged an exhibition of Martin Lewis prints in October 2011 drawn from the collection of Dr. Dorrance Kelly. The Bruce Museum said of Lewis:

Institutions holding Lewis' work include the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and others.