Biography from Schwarz Gallery:
| Edmund Darch Lewis was born in Philadelphia, the son of a prominent businessman. According to family tradition he was educated at a private school and studied painting with the German-born landscapist Paul Weber (1823–1916). He first exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1854, where he was elected an associate in 1859 and a full academician in 1862. He also exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum from 1858 to 1869, and the National Academy of Design in New York in 1860.
Lewis never married and lived a comfortable existence with his parents up to the age of fifty.
The large, detailed, and romantic landscapes that he painted between 1860 and 1876 reflect the influence of his famous contemporaries Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) and Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902). Lewis was a prolific artist whose views of Pennsylvania, New York, and New England were avidly collected by Philadelphia art patrons, and by the early 1880s he had amassed a fortune. Lewis devoted the last thirty years of his life to amassing a huge collection of fine and decorative arts that he displayed in his sumptuously furnished townhouse on 526 South 22nd Street. He lost interest in oil painting and the quality of his work in that medium declined noticeably.
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Biography from AskART:
| Edmund Darch Lewis is best known for his marine watercolors. He lived and worked in Philadelphia, studying for five years under the direction of Paul Weber. His works were first shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1854 and then later at the National Academy of Design in New York and the Boston Athenaeum.
The Philadelphia, New York, and New England areas became the focus of his landscapes, especially the region known as the Delaware Water Gap in Western New Jersey.
Lewis keen vision and remarkable talent created great public demand for his work, inspiring the artist to produce up to three paintings a day. At times, the sales of his paintings exceeded those of all other painters in America. Although his oeuvre made him one of the most financially successful artists of the nineteenth century, Lewis was also well known for his large collection of furniture and China, which he amassed later in life.
Source: Web site of Comenos Fine Art
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