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Lot 173
Doris Lindo Lewis(1909-1995)Return to the Womb
26 September – 7 October 2025, 12:00 EDT
Skinner Marlborough, MassachusettsUS$3,000 - US$5,000
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Jelena James
Senior Specialist, Head of Sale
Claire Dettelbach
Cataloguer
Jewel Bernier
Cataloguer
Doris Lindo Lewis (1909-1995)
Return to the Womb
signed 'Lewis' (lower left); inscribed 'Dead Beckoning' on a typed label (affixed to the backing)
oil on canvas
30 x 17 in. (76.2 x 43.1 cm)
signed 'Lewis' (lower left); inscribed 'Dead Beckoning' on a typed label (affixed to the backing)
oil on canvas
30 x 17 in. (76.2 x 43.1 cm)
Footnotes
Provenance
The Estate of the Artist.
The Collection of Sydney Lewis Glover and J. Denis Glover (by descent from 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 of surrealism and environmental activism, Lewis is known for her explorations of fertility, creation, and woman's place within the natural world. Lewis was born in 1909 in San Jose, Costa Rica, and later moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her mother. She attended the Buckingham School, the May School, and the Museum School in Boston. She spent much of her youth summering in Cape Cod and later moved to South Yarmouth around 1934, where she became associated with several New York, Boston, and Cape Cod artists and writers including Dodge MacKinght, Howard Gibbs, Harold Dunbar, and Byron Thomas. During this early period, she painted primarily traditional Cape Cod landscapes, and exhibited in and around Cambridge. In the 1930s Lewis shifted to more surrealistic work which she exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 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 United States, moving to Florida in 1949, where Lewis began to explore modernism through iron sculpture and pottery. She played a prominent role in Florida's environmental affairs and was credited by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, known for her staunch defense of the Everglades, as a leading force in environmental activism. Doris Lindo Lewis died in 1995 at her home in West Palm Beach. Her works are held in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Washington's National Gallery, and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, among others.