Deep Cove is and etching and drypoint created in 1941 by American artist Jeannette Maxfield Lewis. This impression is pencil signed and titled and the reference is White 104. Lewis incised the plate with J.M Lewis / 1941 which shows up in the lower right image. Deep Cove was printed by the artist on an ivory laid paper and the platemark measures 7 x 9-3/8 inches. According to White, Deep Cove was printed in an edition of 35.
Jeannette Maxfield Lewis used her summers in Pebble Beach to study with Armin Hansen. She began producing etchings in 1931 and, like Hansen, she drew much of her inspiration from the wharves and fishermen in the Monterey area on the Pacific coast. The subject of Deep Cove is a floating wharf in the Monterey vicinity. In the foreground right are the moored fishing boats and wharves and, in the upper left, a fisherman's shack is perched on a steep hill. A series of wooden stairs connect it with the pier below. The fleet is in and men are alighting from their skiffs.
Jeannette Maxfield Lewis (née Jeannette
Maxfield), painter and printmaker, was born to
Lulu and Harry Maxfield in Oakland, California on 19 April 1894. Her parents
enrolled her in the Castilleja School, an independent school for girls in
grades six through twelve in Palo Alto, where she was first exposed to fine art
and was inspired to pursue painting. Maxfield enrolled in the California School
of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), where she was a student of
Gottardo Piazzoni. Maxfield then spent a brief period in New York studying with
Hans Hofmann where she was immersed in Modernism, particularly German
Expressionism.
Upon returning to California Maxfield was employed for a time at Foster and
Kleiser, an outdoor advertising company with a painting factory in San
Francisco. After her marriage to Harold Lewis on 11 March 1920, the couple
moved to Fresno, California while maintaining a summer home in Pebble Beach.
During her summer residences, she studied with Armin Hansen and she began
exploring printmaking in 1931.
Jeannette Maxfield Lewis was a member of and exhibited with the San Francisco
Society of Women Artists, the California Society of Etchers, the Printmakers
Society of California, the Society of Western Artists, the National Association
of Women Artists, and the Pacific, Fresno, Santa Cruz, and Carmel Art Associations.
Her work was included in numerous group exhibitions and solo exhibitions of her
work were mounted at the Crocker Art Gallery in 1946 and the Palace of the
Legion of Honor in 1955. In 1979, a retrospective exhibition of her work was
held at the Fresno Arts Center and, in 1994, the Monterey Museum of Art
organized a traveling retrospective of her work.
The Lewis' moved permanently to Pebble Beach in the 1955, and Jeannette
continued to work and exhibit. By now, Lewis was known for her work in oil,
watercolor, pastel, pen and ink, and etching. Sadly, upon her Harold Lewis’
death in 1964, she abandoned art altogether.
Jeannette Maxfield Lewis’ work is represented in the Crystal Bridges Museum of
American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee; the New York Public Library,
and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Monterey Museum of Art,
California; the Oakland Museum of California; the California State Library,
Sacramento; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California; and the Library
of Congress and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Jeannette Maxfield Lewis died in Monterey, California on 22 April 1892.
