John Frederick Lewis
Detailed, respectful Orientalist realism
John Frederick Lewis was an English Orientalist painter. He specialized in Oriental and Mediterranean scenes in detailed watercolour or oils, very often repeating the same composition in a version in each medium. He lived for several years in a traditional mansion in Cairo, and after his return to England in 1851 he specialized in highly detailed works showing both realistic genre scenes of Middle Eastern life and more idealized scenes in upper class Egyptian interiors with little apparent Western influence. His very careful and loving representation of Islamic architecture, furnishings, screens, and costumes set new standards of realism, which influenced other artists, including the leading French Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme in his later works. Unlike many other Orientalist painters who took a salacious interest in the women of the Middle East, he "never painted a nude", and his wife modelled for several of his harem scenes. These, with the rare examples by the classicist painter Lord Leighton, imagine "the harem as a place of almost English domesticity, ... [where]... women's fully clothed respectability suggests a moral healthiness to go with their natural good looks".
Relationship Network
Master student
- John Richard Coke Smyth Student
Influenced
Artworks by this artist (72 total)
- Suliote
- Asking for alms
- Gray Mare and a Chestnut Foal 1846
- Portrait Of A Prosperous Merchant Of Terapia
- Study Of A Young Neapolitan Woman In Rome
- A Frank Encampment In The Desert Of Mount Sinai, 1842 1862
- Iskander Bey and his Servant ca. 1848
- A Bedouin Encampment; Or, Bedouin Arabs
- Interior of an Eastern House between 1840 and 1851
- Study for ‘The Pipe Bearer’ 1841-51
- Interior of the Great Mosque, (Ulucami) Bursa, Turkey
- Spanish Peasants Dancing the Bolero 1836
- Sheikh el Belled; Kom Ombo 1850
- Portrait of General Jochmus Pasha, circa 1841
- Study of a Lion and Study of a Lioness’ Head 1820
- The Temple of Edfu; The Door of the Pylon 1850
- The Torre de Comares, Alhambra 1835
- A Jewish Woman Of Gibraltar Or Tangier
- The Via Mala
- A Turkish Araba Drawn by Two White Oxen, Constantinople 1841