William A. Lewis served his country in the United States Navy in World War Two as a young man in his twenties. Born in Mo Town, he had attended the University of Michigan just before the war and returned to it afterwards, attending the College of Engineering and College of Architecture and Design from which he graduated in 1948. By 1957, he was back at the school as an assistant teacher of technical drawing, but he also had a flair for art with painterly abstraction.
A trio of controversial paintings by Michigan University Professor William A. Lewis (the younger man in the photo at the time) entitled “Notices on the Gates of Hell.” at First Unitarian Church, April 1963. Photo by Ann Arbor News
“Painting was my primary interest form the start. I did drawings and watercolors in the Navy and went on from there. Traveled in the U.S. and Europe to look at the galleries and collections, studied J.M.W. Turner in England with the aid of Faculty Rackham Grants. I have worked in ceramics and photography, painted in oils, acrylics, and watercolor and have made collages and combines for years,” says Lewis of his work.
” E.A. Poe” Watercolor by William A. Lewis, 1959 at the Poe Museum in Baltimore
He retired from Michigan in 1986 as Professor Emeritus of the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design and Professor of Art Associate Dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, capping a nearly 30-year career as an educator.
While at the school he developed a suite of paintings covering the U.S. Civil War, many of which remain in the schools collection. More accessible are his 40 paintings and sketches on the Great War– WWI. Produced from 1955-2010, these works are some of the most haunting images put to canvas of that horrible conflict and are on special exhibit at the River Gallery.
“This presentation is a display of drawings and paintings based on images of the Great War of 1914-1918 — the First World War. I only know about it through the eyes of others and their words. I have, however, known about the basic imagery all my life,” says Lewis in the preamble to the collection.
The Retreat from Antwerp – British Marines and Belgian soldiers, October, 1914 by William A. Lewis | acrylic | 22″ x 15″ | 2009
(HMS) Revenge in the Lead – British pre-dreadnaughts patrolling in the English Channel, July 1914 by William A. Lewis | watercolor | 15″ x 11″ | 1989
British A-class submarine and armored cruiser HMS Aboukir, spring 1914 by William A. Lewis | watercolor | 22″ x 15″ | 1990-2010
Patriot’s Dream | ink | 18″ x 12″ | by William A. Lewis 1955
Thank you for your service Professor Lewis, and thank you for your art.
