Doris Lindo Lewis
"Circus"
oil on canvas 18" x 26"
Price on request
Artist
and environmentalist, Doris ("Dolly") L. Lewis (Henriquez)
divided her life among Massachusetts, the Caribbean, and South
Florida. Her paternal grandparents descended from old New England
families and built a house on Boston's Marlborough Street when
the Back Bay neighborhood first opened. Later, some of the family
moved to Cambridge, where several in-laws had lived for many years;
one had married Longfellow's artist son, Ernest.
On her mother's side, Lewis descended from the prominent "Anglo"
Lindo family of Jamaica and Costa Rica. Her grandfather was one
of the eight partners of Lindo Brothers, members of which owned
extensive plantations for coffee, bananas, and sugar in Jamaica
and Costa Rica, as well as the J. Wray rum company, the Daniel
Finzi wine and spirit business, and properties on Jamaica's north
coast that later were developed into resorts. They also founded
the Bank of Costa Rica.
Born in 1909 at the Cecil Lindo (her great uncle) Historic House
on Parque Morazan in San Jose, Costa Rica, Lewis returned to a
family plantation "El Sitio" at Juan Vinas, with her
father, Sidney Lewis (of Cambridge, Massachusetts) and her mother,
Daisy ("Mimi") Lindo Lewis (later Voorhis). For a few
years just before and during World War I, Sidney Lewis ran mining
interests out of Wheeling, West Virginia, but decided to return
to Costa Rica in 1919 when his daughter was ten. The family stopped
in New York on the way, staying with Doris Lewis's grandfather,
August Lindo, on Park Avenue. Before embarking, her father traveled
alone to Cambridge to visit his mother for a few days and suddenly
died, perhaps a victim of the flu epidemic. After her father's
death, Lewis was taken by her mother to live with members of the
Lindo family in Jamaica for one year, possibly at her great uncle
Robert's plantation, "Sunnyside," two miles outside
of Linstead.
Then Lewis and her mother migrated to Cambridge to live near her
father's family. In the Boston area she attended the Buckingham
School, the May School, and the Museum School. Summering on Cape
Cod from the late 1920’s and moving to South Yarmouth about
1934, Lewis at a young age became associated with a group of New
York, Boston, and Cape Cod artists and writers, including Van
Gogh's acquaintance Dodge McKnight (friend of Isabella Steward
Gardner), poet Conrad Aiken, and novelist Malcolm Lowry. Lowry
wrote perhaps his most famous letter to her—a 30-page love
letter, which remains in her family.
Other artists who were close associates were Howard Gibbs (whose
first-class "Still Life" Lewis owned), Harold Dunbar
(who painted her portrait, and she, one of him), Byron Thomas
(whose famous "The Skater" she owned), Frederick Wight
(later associated with UCLA), and Alice Stallknecht (who did two
portraits of her). For over sixty years Lewis was a close friend
of Catherine Huntington, who owned the Provincetown Playhouse
and kept Eugene O'Neill's plays alive during the 1940's. She also
painted Huntington's portrait.
On Cape Cod Doris Lewis at first painted typical Cape landscapes
in oil, which exhibited in Cambridge in the early 30's. But at
the same time she produced a strong body of modernist surrealistic
oils, which exhibited at the Provincetown Art Association, Boston's
Museum of Fine Arts, and other locations. She also painted in
New York and Boston.
Through her mother's family, Lewis maintained keen interest in
the Caribbean, and in 1937 married Anglo-Jamaican Edward Henriquez
in Havana, where she spent the next twelve years. Henriquez had
been educated at Belmont Hill School, founded partially for him
and his brother by the Atkins family, who had extensive sugar
holdings in Cuba and land in Belmont outside Boston. An "Anglo"
herself, Lewis—unlike many North Americans—showed great
interest in and love for both native peoples, Cuban Hispanics
and Blacks.
Briefly in the late 1930's—when her husband's sailboat was
being built—Lewis lived under primitive conditions among
Afro-Cuban sugarcane workers some distance from the cultivation
of Havana. During the day the men toiled in the fields, and Lewis
was struck by the spiritual faces of the women and children left
at home—especially by their long-suffering and innocence.
The only art materials she had with her were conte pencils and
a sketchpad. And so were born 25 character-full portraits in an
exhibit, "Faces of Afro Cuba," which showed posthumously
at the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill in 1996.
In 1949 Lewis returned to the States to live in Florida for the
rest of her life. There, in addition to pursuing her own artwork
in hard-edge oils and in pottery, she personally encouraged countless
artists, potters, and gardeners, as well as serving on various
county- and state-wide boards and founding the Ceramic League
of Palm Beach County. She also performed a busy, vocal, and courageous
role in Florida's environmental affairs and is credited as one
of the leading activists to save the Everglades. She died in 1995
at her home in West Palm Beach