Maud Lewis’s doctor opens up about painter and Nova Scotia life
Posted Apr 18, 2017 05:42:51 AM.
Last Updated Apr 18, 2017 05:43:12 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
We are just days away from bidding opening on the long-lost Maud Lewis painting “Portrait of Eddie Barnes and Ed Murphy, Lobster Fishermen, Bay View, N.S.”
It’s a scenario hard to imagine after the painting was found in the donation bin at the New Hamburg Thrift Centre in Southern Ontario last month.
Lewis, known for painting landscapes and other portraits of life in Nova Scotia in the middle of the 20th century, fetched up to $22,000 at auctions for her paintings.
Following a showing at the Scotiabank Maud Lewis Gallery in Halifax, the work will be displayed at the Homer Watson House and Gallery in Kitchener and open for bids on April 20th.
To celebrate the discovery, as well as the movie opening this week about the life of Maud Lewis “Maudie”, several people have spoken up about their experiences with Maud Lewis, including her old doctor Paul Minc.
Dr. Minc, now long-retired and 89-years-old, did house calls in the rural regions of Nova Scotia from 1959 to 1965, and Maud was one of his patients.
Her small home was one of only three that made up Marshalltown, near Digby, and it was apparently quite the sight to see.
“Maud painted all of her beautiful coloured paintings on every inch of the outside wall and all the way around, and the same on the inside walls,” says Minc. “Pictures of life and how it went on in that part of Nova Scotia. Fishing boats, lobster fishermen, and ox teams with two ox pulling carts up and down the road.”
He recalls only fond memories of the painter, who passed away shortly afterwards in 1970.
“She was always smiling. She was the most cheerful personality,” says Minc. “She was trapped in a disabled body but she flew out of it with her painting.”
Minc says Lewis offered him one of her paintings for only $2, but in poor rural Nova Scotia in the 1960s, he only made 50 cents per house call from those who could afford it, and that was too rich for his blood.
He doesn’t regret not buying one though, and since then has purchased many of the Maud Lewis calendars, having the pictures framed around his home to this day.
