Stanley Lewis's painting 'Home Front' and the story of its discovery

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Stanley Lewis's painting 'Home Front' and the story of its discovery

Stanley Lewis
1905 – 2009
Home Front


Stanley Lewis was born near Llanfrechfa near Newport and brought up on Whitehall Farm. As a young boy he was keen on sketching and he studied at the Newport School of Art from 1923 to 1926. He was then awarded a place at the Royal College of Art where he studied from 1926 until 1930. In 1930 he won second prize in the Rome Scholarship Awards in Mural Painting, and later that year returned home to take up the post of Painting Master at Newport School of Art.

Stanley began to exhibit annually from 1931 to 1961 in the Royal Academy Show and in 1937 his painting The Welsh Mole Catcher was voted the most popular picture. (Now in the Newport collection)

The Mole Catcher

It was whilst teaching in Newport that he met his wife Min and they married 2nd August 1939. In1939 World War II was declared and he became a Fire Warden and was based in the college on night shifts. After their marriage they lived at 6 Chepstow Road, and one night whilst on duty at the college, Stanley heard a noise coming up from the Bristol Channel which disturbed him. His colleague shrugged it off as spitfires returning home. However, it was a Dornier and it was dropping sea mines in a row and one landed in Chepstow Road blowing Stanley off his feet. Students were gradually disappearing to join the forces but Stanley managed to hold onto his job and he was in Newport when the Heinkel crashed into the Phillips family home on the night of 13th September 1940. He was commissioned to paint a picture depicting wartime Newport and he hung the huge canvas in the art college. In it he sketches the incident of the 13th September and he includes various bits of equipment that were brought over to the college for him to sketch and he used students as his models. Sadly the work was uncompleted. In 1941 he was called up. 

He travelled to North Wales for initial training and joined the Searchlight Regiment of the Gloucestershire Regiment in Somerset. Later he was transferred to The Fleet Air Arm in Yovelton. Here his artistic talents were put to use and he painted a number of paintings which ended up in the officers mess. Whilst working on one Bomber Harris turned up and sat down with him and declared that once the war was over he should return to being an artist. He was commissioned to paint the sinking of the Turpitz. Which know hangs in the Fleet Air Arm Museum.

After the war he returned to Newport but he was soon offered job as principle of Carmarthen School of Art where he taught until his retirement in 1967. They moved house on many occasions and for a while they lived in Laugharne where they became friends with the Thomas’ and many year later his wife Min wrote a story called “Laugharne and Dylan Thomas” and Stanley illustrated it. It was published in 1967.

Roger Cucksey takes up the story


'Exactly 60 years after it was painted two visitors to the gallery asked to see the Mole Catcher. Born in 1905 I’d assumed Stanley was probably dead.
 'OH NO', said the woman, 'He’s alive and well and living in Kington. I’m Mary Lewis his daughter-in-law. Would you like to meet him?'
 This was the beginning of a delightful relationship. At his home in Kington I was greeted by Stanley and his wife Min with a glass of champagne at 10.45am in the morning.
Wartime Newport: Home-front in the barn

After much discussion, he had an extraordinary memory, I was taken into an adjacent stone barn where this damaged and torn canvas was hanging on the wall with rusty nails. Unfinished in when he was called up in 1940 it was folded up and had accompanied him for the next 57 years surviving 10 house moves. He happily agreed to the rescue, removal, restoration and display of his ‘mural’ in Newport. Stanley always referred to it as a ‘mural'. After a great deal of work and fund raising it was unveiled in the gallery by Newport author Leslie Thomas in time for 60th  Anniversary of the ending of WW2.'



Richard Frame and Roger Cucksey



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