Preview Lot
DORIS LINDO LEWIS(American, 1909-1995)OUT OF SEQUENCE
11 June 2025, 12:00 EDT
Skinner Marlborough, MassachusettsUS$7,000 - US$10,000
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Jewel Bernier
Cataloguer
Bids (Bonhams Skinner)
Jelena James
Senior Specialist, Head of Sale
Claire Dettelbach
Cataloguer
DORIS LINDO LEWIS (American, 1909-1995)
OUT OF SEQUENCE
unsigned; title identified on a typed label (affixed to the backing paper)
oil on canvas
24 3/4 x 24 in. (63.0 x 61.0 cm)
framed 30 1/2 x 29 3/8 x 2 in. (77.5 x 74.7 x 5.0 cm)
unsigned; title identified on a typed label (affixed to the backing paper)
oil on canvas
24 3/4 x 24 in. (63.0 x 61.0 cm)
framed 30 1/2 x 29 3/8 x 2 in. (77.5 x 74.7 x 5.0 cm)
Footnotes
Provenance
Private collection, Massachusetts (by decent of the artist).
N.B.
Artist and environmentalist, Doris ("Dolly") Lindo Lewis (Henriquez) divided her life among New York, Massachusetts, the Caribbean, and South Florida. Now recognized as a pioneer female surrealist an environmental activist Lewis is known for her explorations of fertility, creation, and woman's place within the natural world. Born 1909 in San Jose, Costa Rica, and later moving to Cambridge, MA, she attended Buckingham School, the May School, and the Museum School. Summering on Cape Cod from the mid 1920's and moving to South Yarmouth around 1934, Lewis became associated with several New York, Boston, and Cape Cod artists and writers such as Dodge MacKinght, Howard Gibbs, Harold Dunbar, and Byron Thomas. During this period, she shifted from traditional cape-code landscapes to surrealism, exhibiting these works at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and the Provincetown Art Association. In 1937, Lewis married Anglo-Jamaican Edward Henriquez in Havana, where she spent the next twelve years. The two later returned to the states, moving to Florida in 1949, where she began to explore modernism, iron sculpture, and pottery. Lewis played a courageous role in Florida's environmental affairs and was credited by Marjory Stoneman Douglas for her efforts in saving the Everglades. Doris Lindo Lewis died in 1995 at her home in West Palm Beach. Her works can be found in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Washington's National Gallery, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and other collections.
The present work is an exemplary representation of Lewis's surrealist compositions. Completed in the early 1930's, the work features a beautifully haunting arrangement of detached elements derived from the subconscious mind. A whale vertebra flanks the left edge of the canvas with a vase of dried flowers to its right as a large, menacing cicada, looms over the scene.