ADAM'S IRISH OLD MASTERS 14 MAY 2026

22 17 CHARLES LEWIS (1753-1795) A Still Life of Peaches, Plums and Figs Oil on canvas, 60 x 75cm Signed and dated 1788 € 5,000 - 7,000 A silver bowl of fruit sits on a polished wooden top, framed by drapes of luscious dark green. A still-life mostly comprising peaches, but with some plums and figs too overflows from the bowl onto the table top. Signed and dated by Charles Lewis this is a rare sur- vival of still life painting from Georgian Dublin. Lewis was, with Charles Collins, one of the very few practi- tioners of the genre in oil in eighteenth century Ireland. Little known today, his work was much admired by contemporaries and circulated widely in Dublin in the nineteenth century. The year after his death, Lewis was praised by Anthony Pasquin in the very first account of Irish painting: ‘some of his fruit pieces are so well imagined, that they will continue to be in request, while still-life can awaken admiration’. Unlike Collins, who seems to have been a native Dubliner, Lewis was born in Gloucester where at an early age he sketched local Rococo gardens. After a spell in Birmingham decorating japanned tea trays, he started exhibiting in the Society of Artists in London in 1772, showing fruit pieces including works entitled ‘Grapes’ and also ‘A Cut Melon’ – both motifs feature in the present pair. He also exhibited a ‘Flower Piece’ and ‘A Barcelona Lap Dog’. In 1776 Lewis moved to Dublin where he trod the stage, appearing in the role of Merlin, in David Garrick’s Cymon at Crow Street theatre. However, he soon retuned to painting, being, according to Pasquin, ‘unequal to the effrontery and bustle of the stage’ and the following year he set out his stall in the press: Charles Lewis, fruit and flower painter, having received great encouragement from the nobility, gentry in this kingdom, and having had his work shown in the exhibition, honoured with approbation of the best judge, begs leave to return his sincerest thanks for all their favours, and to acquaint them that he has taken a house in Mecklenburg Street, No 59, where he will receive their commands, when shall be executed with all possible elegance and design’. (Hibernian Journal 9-11 July 1777) Lewis further noted that he taught ‘ladies and gen- tlemen drawing and painting in oil or watercolour, on moderate terms’, and promised ‘the strictest attention to the improvement of his pupils’. In 1780, giving an address on Essex Street, Lewis exhibited at the Soci- ety of Artists in Ireland in their [South] William Street octagonal room. His exhibits were all still-lifes: A Large Fruit Picture, with a Macaw; Five Fruit Pieces; A Flower Piece and Dead Birds. Lewis also exhibited, fruit and game subjects at the Royal Academy in London. In a 1786 Dublin auction his ‘Fruit’ was described as ‘a masterly performance’ (Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, 9-11 May 1786) while at the Lyceum Exhibition on College Green in May 1790 ‘some fruit pieces by Lewis’, were singled out in a press report for capturing ‘the mellow ripeness of nature’ (Dublin Evening Journal and Post, 27 May). Painted in between these two dates, in 1788, this accomplished and decorative piece justifies the artist’s contemporary acclaim. Lewis was clearly pro- ductive in Dublin. As Nesta Butler notes, of the sev- enty-six paintings by the artist which came to market between 1786 and 1832, ‘all but ten were in Dublin sales’ (Art and Architecture of Ireland, Vol. 2, p. 346). At the Dublin auction of Sir John Ferns’s collection it was noted that ‘his works are so well known in this country’ (Vallance’s, auction house, cited ibid.)’. However, by the time that Strickland wrote the supply of works by the artist had dwindled: ‘Fruit pieces by Lewis, painted in oil, are occasionally met with in Ireland’. Strickland was also slightly more guarded in his assessment than the enthusiastic Pasquin had been more than a century earlier ‘they are not without merit, being well painted and good in colour’ (Vol. 2, p. 19), the judgement of Ellis Waterhouse was altogether more favourable: ‘His fruit pieces are well designed and well painted’.