Maud lewis net worth
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Getting to Know Maud Lewis
In contrast to the often bleak landscape and harsh climate of rural Nova Scotia that formed the backdrop of her life, Maud’s paintings brim with vivid, joyous colour. Was she escaping the miseries of her life through her painting? Or was she simply adept at seeing the beauty in the world and expressing it through her work?
When Maud was in grade five, she was fourteen years old. Was this because of her illness? because she was bullied? or because early in the twentieth century there wasn’t always a teacher available where she lived?
When Maud’s daughter, Catherine Dowley, showed up on her doorstep in 1950 (unlike what happens in the movie “Maudie”), Maud told Catherine she couldn’t be her daughter because she’d given birth to a baby boy who, very soon after, died. Was that because that’s what she’d been told by her parents and she believed it? Because she didn’t want Everett to know about the baby she’d had years before they married? Or because she wanted to keep that painful part of her past behind her?
Despite all my research, I couldn’t com
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Biography
Maud Lewis (1901–1970) has become one of Canada’s most renowned artists, the subject of numerous monographs, novels, plays, documentaries, and even a feature film. She was born into relative comfort and obscurity, and died in poverty, though enjoying national fame. She overcame severe physical challenges to create a unique artistic style, and sparked a boom in folk art in her home province. Though she rarely left her tiny house, her works have travelled around the world, and in the decades since her death she has become an iconic figure, a symbol of Nova Scotia, and a beloved character in the popular imagination.
Early Life
Maud Lewis’s life was bounded by the distance between two of southwestern Nova Scotia’s major towns—Digby and Yarmouth. She was born in the hospital in Yarmouth on March 7, 1901, raised in the neighbouring small village of South Ohio, and lived most of her adult life closer to Digby, in the village of Marshalltown. The distance between the two towns is just over a hundred kilometres, stretching along the Bay of Fundy shore of one o
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Maud Lewis exemplified the simple life. But simple doesn’t mean dull. The simplicity of her paintings, brushed initially with scrounged paint from local fishermen onto ubiquitous green boards and post cards, continue to evoke feelings of innocence, of child-like exuberance as enduring as the spring times she loved to paint. And today she still captures audiences intrigued by everyday scenes as diverse as hard-working oxen and whimsical butterflies.
Maud Dowley Lewis was born March 7, 1903 in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Her father Jack would provide a moderately prosperous living as a respected craftsman, making harnesses and serving as a blacksmith. Agnes, her mother, favored artistic pursuits including painting, folk carving and music. Born disfigured with sloped shoulders and her chin resting on her chest, Maud led a confined but happy home life after she quit school at 14, perhaps in part to escape the mocking of her peers. “What is life without love or friendship?” she once confided to a friend. Her mother lovingly taught her to play the piano before arthritis crippled her hands.
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