Carriage Ride Through Town

Acquired directly from the Artist Private Collection, Nova Scotia By descent to the present Private Collection

Lance Woolaver, “Maud Lewis: The Heart on the Door”, Halifax, 2016, page 65

Maud Lewis’s father was a harness maker and a well-liked man in Yarmouth. As Maud’s former classmate would recall, “her father had a harness shop on Jenkins Street, going towards Water Street. There were three steps to go up into the shop and it was very clean and neat. He had harnesses hanging on the walls, sleigh bells and other leather goods. He also had a repair shop in the back, that is why I went in there. I had a leather belt for him to shorten. He was a pleasant man, average height and nice manner.” Through her father’s work, Maud developed a love of traditional practices in an age of rapid innovation. Her pictures often reflected a way of life that was undergoing major changes and, at times, disappearing. Lewis would often include detailed harnesses in her work as we see in this early 1960s painting, “Carriage Ride Through Town”. Though harness makers and blacksmiths would soon disappear from rural Nova Scotia, we are given insight into the ideals that Lewis held dear, namely, beautiful nature, close connections to animals, and the happiness that comes from family love.