Martin Lewis valuation

Martin Lewis (1881–1962) was born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia, and studied with Julian Ashton at the Art Society's School in Sydney. He left for the United States in 1900, worked first in San Francisco and by 1909 was making commercial illustrations in New York. His earliest known etching is dated 1915, and in those years he helped Edward Hopper learn the basics of etching. He spent two years in Japan from 1920 studying its art, and Japanese prints influenced his later work. His subject was everyday New York street life, often at night, in black-and-white drypoints and etchings, some made with a sand ground, among them Stoops in Snow, Snow on the 'El' and Boss of the Block. Most of his best-known plates date from 1925 to 1935, and exhibitions in the late 1920s let him give up commercial work. From 1932 to 1936 he lived in Newtown, Connecticut, making rural and winter night scenes. He taught printmaking at the Art Students League of New York from 1944 to 1952. His prints are in the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Lewis also painted, but his work is mostly prints: drypoints, etchings and aquatints, signed in pencil and sometimes marked 'imp' where he printed the impression himself. Paul McCarron's catalogue raisonné, The Prints of Martin Lewis (1995), numbers the prints and records how many impressions were made, so a buyer will want the McCarron number, the paper and the signature checked, and whether the sheet is a trial proof. Old paper can show foxing, mount stains and trimmed margins.