Edmund Darch Lewis "A Summer Day" 1871

Edmund Darch Lewis grand landscape of the Catskills done in 1871 is a classic example of this National Academy artist. Signed lower right. It is housed in its original gold leaf frame. Overall size 30 by 43.5 inches.

Edmund Darch Lewis was born in Philadelphia and began to study art in his teens in private classes with Paul Weber. He gained recognition early for his landscapes and marine views, focusing on the Lehigh, Susquehanna, and Wissahickon Rivers of Pennsylvania. Lewis achieved both critical and financial success as a young man. Exhibiting for the first time at age 19 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he was elected an Associate of the Academy at age 24 and a full Academician two years later in 1862. Lewis also exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum and the National Academy of Design in New York in the 1860s. His grand, romantic landscapes from 1860-76, often featuring the Catskills or the White Mountains, have been compared to those of his contemporaries Frederick Church and Albert Bierstadt. In the painting at hand, possibly the Susquehanna, Lewis portrays the magnificence of nature, filling the canvas with precise detail but also enhancing the most picturesque aspects of the landscape to create dramatic effect