Maud Lewis Christmas cards worth more $30K stolen from Halifax home

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Halifax Regional Police are trying to track down whoever stole three Christmas cards painted by famed folk artist Maud Lewis from a Halifax home late last year.

The works — stolen from a Cambridge Street home on Nov. 25 — are each believed to be worth more than $10,000.

“They are originals,” said Const. Martin Cromwell, who speaks for the force.

Police described the three matted and framed cards as about seven inches by five inches in size.

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“Somebody probably maybe inadvertently let people know that they had them,” said Ian Muncaster, a director at Zwicker’s Gallery in downtown Halifax.

“It sounds like somebody knew what they were after.”

Muncaster confirmed the cards are valuable.

“They get good money; up to $10,000,” he said.

A small Maud Lewis painting sold in Toronto in May 2022 for $350,000, Muncaster said. “That’s an exceptional price for Maud Lewis.”

Muncaster doubts whoever stole the three artworks last November will try to sell them in Nova Scotia.

“There’s a market for Maud Lewis, a very active one, from coast-to-coast, and even in the United States,” he said.

“You wouldn’t have to sell it here.”

Muncaster said he’ll ensure police inform members of the Art Dealers Association of Canada about the stolen works, “so it’s broadcast across the country, so people are aware.”

The Christmas cards could have been stolen to order, he said. “It’s possible. You never know with these things…. Stolen and forged art now is the second largest source of income for organized crime after drugs. It’s huge — billions a year.”

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The cards were likely painted more than six decades back, Muncaster said.

“She was a prolific painter. She painted about one a day,” he said. “Her Christmas cards are usually from her early to mid-career, usually from the ‘40s and ‘50s.”

That’s how she got her start, Muncaster said. “Her husband, Everett, used to peddle fish door-to-door. So, she would do these little Christmas cards … and she’d sell them for 25 cents each.”

Until the 1960s, Lewis was selling her full-size paintings for $4 or $5 a piece, Muncaster said.

But a 1965 article in the Star Weekly that referred to Lewis as a “natural primitive” for her paintings of rustic country scenes popularized her work across Canada, he said.

“So many people were intrigued by the story of this little lady producing these charming paintings for $4 or $5.”

Lots of folks tore the article out of the paper and made plans to visit the artist in Nova Scotia, Muncaster said. “Maude started to get all sorts of extra people coming in to see her. Then somebody at the CBC saw the article and they produced a documentary about her, World Without Shadows.”

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Lewis, who died in 1970 at the age of 67, became “quite well known for the last five or six years” of her life, Muncaster said.

Many of those who own her work enjoy showing it off.

“It’s not a matter of connoisseurship,” Muncaster said. “You have a trophy.”

People like the story behind her work, he said. “This lady in the back end of nowhere, living actually in squalor, more than poverty. She was so poor.”

Lewis had rheumatoid arthritis as a child, he said. “She didn’t develop a chin. So, if you look at Maud Lewis’ pictures — photographs of her — she usually has got a hand up covering her chin or she’s looking down. She was just an obscure little lady painting with signs by the roadside in Digby County.”

It can be tough to determine fake Maud Lewis paintings from the real thing, he said.

“The thing about Maud is she painted the same subject over and over and over again,” he said.

“So, it’s often very difficult, and people bring ‘Maud Lewis’ paintings to me all the time for authenticity and there are quite a few forgeries appearing. They’re worth so much money and it doesn’t take that much to forge a Maud Lewis as opposed to forging a Rembrandt or one of the French Impressionists.”

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Muncaster figures Lewis probably painted 10,000 works in her lifetime.

“She admitted she painted about one a day,” he said. “She painted for three decades — the ‘40s, the ‘50s, and the ‘60s.”

He hopes the rightful owner of the three paintings stolen in November sees their return, but he doesn’t see that as likely. “If they’re taken down to the States or even if somebody just holds on to them for a few weeks until everything quiets down, and then goes out to Calgary or somewhere like that to sell them, it may not be remembered, or maybe not even known … that they were stolen.”

Lewis never profited much from her own artwork, he said.

“Her husband took all the money and hid it behind a brick in the chimney in the kitchen.”

After her death, the tiny house she once inhabited in Marshalltown, Digby County, was moved to Halifax and reassembled at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

“It was covered with her paintings,” Muncaster said.

Police want anyone with information about the art thefts or video from the area to call 902-490-5020.

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