Portrait of a lady, half-length, in a yellow dress with blue bows, feigned oval

Unusually John Lewis was a scene and landscape painter as well as a portrait painter, working in Wales and Ireland. Lewis may have been a Welshman, but from Shrewsbury, and the most recent information on his life is Peter Lord, The Two Lives of John Lewis, (Irish Arts Review, Spring, 2005, pages 114-119). He was working in Wales and Ireland in the 1740's and definitely established in Ireland in 1750 when he started to work for Thomas Sheridan in the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. His connection with the theatre led him to portray among others a number of well known theatrical figures including Peg Woffington, during one of her seasons at Smock Alley, and Thomas Sheridan (both National Gallery of Ireland; see N. Figgis and B. Rooney, Irish Painting in the National Gallery of Ireland, 2001, pp. 346-52, nos. 579 and 1132), both of which are dated 1753, the year prior to the present portrait. His portrait of the author Henry Brooke is dated 1755. Lewis continued to work in Ireland even after he stopped working at the Smiock Alley theatre in 1757 but later seems to have left Ireland for England in 1762. Unfortunatley the identity of the sitter in the present portrait is lost.