Jeannette Maxfield Lewis Biography

Jeannette Maxfield Lewis

American

1894-1982

Biography

Jeannette Maxfield Lewis, painter and printmaker, was born in Oakland, California on April 19, 1894.  Her artistic disposition was nourished by a well-rounded education at the Castilleja School for girls in Palo Alto. Her studies continued at the California School of Fine Arts where she a student of Gottardo Piazzoni. Maxfield spent a brief period in New York studying with Hans Hofmann. Upon returning to California she was employed for a time at Foster and Kleiser, an outdoor advertising  company with a painting factory in San Francisco. After her marriage to H. C Lewis in 1920, the couple moved to Fresno, California while maintaining a summer home in Pebble Beach. During summers she studied with Armin Hansen and she began exploring printmaking techniques 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 Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Fresno Arts Center, and the Crocker Museum in Sacramento.

 

Public repositories of her work include the Art Institute of Chicago; the Library of Congress and the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the New York Public Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Oakland Museum of California; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the California State Library, Sacramento; the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee.

 

Jeannette Maxfield Lewis died in Monterey, California on April 22, 1982.