Charles James Lewis
Charles James Lewis was an English painter in oils and watercolours.Life
Lewis was born in 1830 in Chelsea, London; his father, Charles Thomas Lewis, had Welsh ancestry. He first exhibited in 1853, when at the Royal Academy of Art he showed a portrait of "Miss Shelton". She was Mary Ann Matilda Hammond Shelton, whom he married in 1854.
He became a painter of rustic genre scenes and of landscape, and his works were very popular. He was a prolific artist, and a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy, at the Society of British Artists, and at the British Institution ; his works were also shown at other London exhibitions. His pictures were usually signed "C. J. Lewis".
Lewis's more highly regarded work was done in watercolour; in 1882 he was elected a member of the Institute of Painters in Water-Colours. He also became a member of the Institute of Painters in Oil Colours.
From 1884 he lived in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where he died on 28 January 1892 after a long illness, survived by his wife and family. He was buried at Brookwood Cemetery, Woking.
