LEWIS, Henry

LEWIS, Henry. (England, 1819--Dusseldorf, Germany, 1904). Lewis emigrated to the United States at the age of ten with his father and brothers and apprenticed to a carpenter. He and his father moved to St. Louis seven years later where he worked as a carpenter and scenery painted at the St. Louis Theater. (1)

The illustrations and descriptions of the MISSISSIPPI RIVER Valley made by Lewis are considered the most complete record of the subject made in the nineteenth century. His Mammoth Panorama of the Mississippi River completed in Cincinnati in 1849 showed consecutive river scenes on a roll of canvas, 1,300 feet long with a height of 12 feet, stretched between two cylinders on opposite wings of the theater stage. (2) For fifty cents a person, the audience had the illusion of traveling the Mississippi-either up or downstream depending on the direction the canvas was unwound. This was accompanied by an illustrated book of the river which was published under the title Das Illustrierte Mississippithal (The Valley of the Mississippi River Illustrated) in 1854. (3)

Cheever's Mill on the St. Croix River

Between 1846 and 1848 he sketched and painted hundreds of scenes of the Mississppi River including rare pictures of the Morman Temple at Nauvoo, Illinois which was burned in 1848. (4)

In 1848 Lewis visited Dubuque on his trip from Fort Snelling near present day St. Paul, Minnesota, to St. Louis, Missouri. He remarked that the city was certain to become the metropolis of the LEAD MINING region and one of the Upper Mississippi River's most important cities.

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Source:

1. Henry Lewis. askART. Online: http://www.askart.com/artist/Henry_Lewis/20382/Henry_Lewis.aspx

2. "Henry Lewis," https://www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/lewis-henry/falls-saint-anthony-upper-mississippi

3. askART

4. "Professor Henry Lewis," Victorian Artists, Online: http://www.avictorian.com/Lewis_Henry.html