A Woodland Ramble "When daisies pied and violets blue And Lady-smocks all silver white, and cuckoo buds of yellow hue" - William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, Act V, Scene 2

The Art Journal wrote of this picture: 'A Woodland Ramble' (454), by C.J. Lewis, is, in its way, a marvel, after the artist's familiar manner: the details include primroses, bluebells, a squirel, &c., all on the confines of a wood; the pictorial difficulty involved is surmounted adroitly.

Lewis was immensely popular in his day. Despite living at Cheyne House, on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, he made regular forays to the country to paint landscape and rustic genre. He regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy to critical acclaim, often appending his pictures with lines from Shakespeare, Tennyson and Gray.