Christmas Card Sleigh and Covered Bridge

About Christmas Card Sleigh and Covered Bridge

This rare watercolour folk art painting was one of a series of Christmas cards created by Maud Lewis.

Maud Lewis’s fanciful artwork has captured the imagination of audiences around the world. Her simple, almost child-like paintings full of colour and charm visualize the essence of rural life in Nova Scotia. She was never formally trained as an artist but as a young child used to paint Christmas cards with her mother. Importantly, this was one of several cards showcased in the 1997 travelling exhibition, The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis. It is still in the cherrywood frames from that exhibition and is considered very special for that reason. This card—a wintery scene with a horse-drawn sleigh entering a covered bridge was originally painted by the adult Maud and sold from the house she shared with her husband; a fish peddler named Everett. The bright red sleigh is travelling away from the viewer towards the yellow-covered bridge, against a snow-covered hill, a line of evergreens and two farmhouses in the distance. Lewis loved colour and this little painting is no exception rendered in a vivid palette of yellow, green, red, orange and crisp white.
Lewis’s happy paintings belied the hard impoverished life she led—she suffered from crippling arthritis that twisted her fingers and made it difficult to hold a paintbrush. A prolific artist, Maud Lewis painted the world she recalled—flowers, cats, fishermen, boats, farmhouses, oxen, and the countryside in all seasons. She famously also painted everything—every surface of her house—from coffee cans to dustpans, stairs, windows, walls and the front door.

“I imagine and paint from memory. I don’t copy much…just have to guess my work up.” Maud Lewis

“Maud adopted a style that emerged from inside the heart of a true artist. As such, she could produce images of enduring quality and appeal, images that transformed her maritime surroundings into painted visions.”
Wayne & Jocelyn Cameron

Maud Lewis was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia in 1901. As an adult, she sold paintings from the house she shared with her husband for five dollars each. Lewis died at age 69. The little one-room house was restored and is on permanent exhibit at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Her artwork is held there and in the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Maud Lewis is the subject of several biographies and two National Film Board of Canada documentaries. In 2017, a biopic of Maud's life titled "Maudie" was released starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke.