John Kinnear was motivated by a heartfelt desire to help when he sat down in his London, Ont., home to write a letter to Nova Scotia folk artist Maud Lewis.
It was 1965 and Kinnear — an artist himself — had just read a profile of Lewis in Star Weekly magazine, which was included in his weekend edition of the London Free Press.
The story chronicled a talented artist unmotivated by fame or fortune, living a hardscrabble existence in poverty and isolation in rural Marshalltown outside Digby, N.S., with her husband Everett. She painted colourful, cheerful rural scenes and pictures of animals. She also had debilitating rheumatoid arthritis and lived in a small one-room house with no running water or electricity.
Kinnear and Lewis wrote a number of letters to each other. On Saturday, six that she sent to him from 1966 to 1967 will officially be auctioned by Miller & Miller Auctions Ltd., with an estimated sale price for the lot of between $3,000 and $5,000. Bids can also be placed in advance online.
“My father was very touched by that [Star Weekly] story and he liked the pictures of her work,” said Kinnear’s daughter Sheila, now 69 and an artist like her dad, who was a London police officer and died in 2003.
A teenager at the time, Sheila remembers her father handing her the newspaper story to read. He was a kind, patient man and a Second World War veteran. He regularly had discussions with his daughter about art and put literature in front of her to read.
“I was his shadow,” she said about her dad.
Their interest piqued by the story, they decided to send Lewis a letter along with some much-needed art supplies.
“My father always said it’s never too later to help someone,” Sheila said, “because you may be the only one that does.”
CBC’s biography series Telescope looks in on folk artist Maud Lewis and her husband Everett. Airdate: Nov. 25, 1965.
Two weeks after sending the letter, Lewis sent one back.
And so began what would become regular correspondence.
Miller & Miller Auctions said John and Lewis wrote to each other for five years until she died of pneumonia in 1970. Her husband died in 1979.
“It’s believed Maud Lewis had few correspondents during that time,” the auction house says in a release.
Lewis would send John samples of her work and he would regularly ship her art supplies. In the handwritten letters, they talked about everything from art to the weather.
In one dated Feb. 3, 1967, she writes to him: “You’ll be getting tired of hearing from me.”
A painter who worked in both oil and watercolours, he also sent a special paint primer to Lewis. He was worried her paintings wouldn’t last because they were often done on wood, cardboard and whatever medium she had on hand.
At the time, Lewis was overwhelmed with her sudden and newfound fame. Her paintings were selling for no more that $10 each. John famously traded one of the paintings she sent to him for a grilled cheese sandwich at a downtown London lunch spot in the 1970s. That painting, called Black Truck, sold for $350,000 in 2022.
Notoriety after death
In recent years, renown has grown for Lewis’s work. Her paintings were featured on a stamp series, and her house is now fully restored and on permanent display at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax.
Her story was the subject of a 2017 film, Maudie, staring Ethan Hawke and Sally Hawkins.
Sheila said what her father truly valued is the friendship and kind words the two shared in their letters.
She said he had asked her to open the red trunk where he kept the letters a few months before his death.
Maud Lewis’s simple scenes of rural life are selling for tens — and sometimes hundreds — of thousands of dollars. But Halifax art dealer Chad Brown says putting down that kind of money can be risky with the number of forgeries out there.
“We read all the letters and we reminisced about Maud and the days gone by, and his eyes welled up and mine did to,” she said. “He always had a high regard for her.”
Sheila said her father had friendships and exchanged letters with other artists, including London’s Greg Curnoe and Group of Seven painter A.Y. Jackson, and that he had survived being a prisoner of war and had seen great suffering in Europe.
“He knew pain and hardship,” she said. “He also valued kindness and believed in lending a hand to others less fortunate.”