Covered Bridge with Three Sleighs

About Covered Bridge with Three Sleighs

This oil painting of a covered bridge with three sleighs in winter is by folk artist Maud Lewis.

Maud Lewis is an important Canadian painter—a renowned folk artist whose iconic work is beloved and collected internationally. Lewis’s fanciful, brightly coloured folk art paintings belied a hard life of poverty and poor health. Using the leftover paint local fishermen used for their boats, the self-taught artist painted on whatever surface she could find, including shells, dustpans, and even her tiny wood-framed house. This charming oil on board painting captures a winter scene—a historic wooden covered bridge (seen all over Nova Scotia) in the foreground…a horse-drawn sleigh about to cross the frozen river framed by snow-covered fir trees. Two more sleighs are seen in the background, gliding through the snowy landscape against a backdrop of colourful village homes, a church and an evergreen forest. The vivid colour palette is classic Maud—tomato red, bright yellow, sky blue, forest and lime green that pops against the crisp white of the snow with chocolate brown and black offering contrast. Maud Lewis painted the world she saw through the window, often recalling and imagining pictures of her Nova Scotia home.

"I ain't much for travelling…as long as I have a brush in front of me, I' all right." Maud Lewis

“From time to time in the world of art, there emerges someone with extraordinary talent that sets them apart from their contemporaries and affords them a special place in the hearts of those who come in contact with the work. Maud Lewis was such an artist.” Lance Woolaver, Canadian author

Maud Lewis was born (1903-1972) in South Ohio, a small community near Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. She was never formally trained as an artist, but as a young child, she used to paint Christmas cards with her mother. As an adult, she sold paintings from the house she shared with her husband for five dollars. Her happy paintings belied the impoverished life she led, disfiguring birth defects and crippling arthritis that made it difficult to hold a paintbrush. 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, a stage play and three National Film Board of Canada documentaries. In 2017, a biopic of Maud's life titled "Maudie" was released, starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke.