Edmund Darch Lewis was born in Philadelphia in 1835 and by the early 1860s was one of the most popular artists in Philadelphia, exhibiting frequently at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and New York’s National Academy of Design. His paintings of the period were also exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum. The artist’s early career was launched by a period of study in the studio of the German-born landscape painter Paul Weber, who had settled in Philadelphia by 1848 and developed an avid following among art students eager to advance in the study of painting the landscape.

Lewis’ early contributions to the New York and Philadelphia annual exhibits were often oil paintings and watercolors of the landscapes of Pennsylvania and New York, and a series of canvases painted in 1858 and 1859 in New England. These northern views were painted chiefly among the White Mountains of New Hampshire, taking subjects from Mount Washington and the nearby Saco River.

Perhaps better known today for his many watercolors of yachting scenes and beach vignettes painted along the shores of Narragansett and Newport, Rhode Island, it is these early landscape paintings that are clearly his finest efforts. Born into a wealthy family, and having enjoyed the success of the sale many of his paintings, Lewis developed into a leading collector of furniture and decorative arts, achieving particular note for his collection of Chinese porcelain.