Jennie Lewis American, 1892-1944

Jennie Lewis, painter and printmaker, was born in San Diego and raised in San Francisco, where she studied at the Fine Art School. She taught art at a convent school and joined the WPA California Federal Art Project in 1938, producing 32 lithographs with printer Ray Bertrand. Her work was shown in the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939 and earned her a solo exhibition at the MoMA, New York, in 1940. Known for her precise, atmospheric depictions of architecture and cityscapes, Lewis was represented by the Paul Elder Gallery and exhibited widely until her untimely death in 1944 after getting lost in a Sierra Nevada snowstorm. That same year, SFMOMA held a memorial exhibition of her work. Her prints and paintings are now in the collections of MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other major museums.