Lesley Lewis

The following obituary for Lesley Lewis FSA, art historian  (born on 8 March 1909; died on 29 January 2010, aged 100), first appeared in The Times on 12 March 2010.

Lesley Lewis made distinguished contributions to the history of art and architecture as an author and by serving on numerous influential heritage bodies. She was one of the founding students of the newly formed Courtauld Institute in the early 1930s.

Lesley Lewis was born in 1909, the daughter of Kathleen, née Pott, and James Lawrence, a solicitor. She was brought up in the family home, Pilgrims Hall near Pilgrims Hatch, Essex. She described her childhood in The Private Life of a Country House (1912—39).

In keeping with her social background and the era in which she lived, she was educated at home by governesses, the last of whom introduced her to the study of the history of art. At the age of 17 she was sent to finishing school in Paris. In 1931 she read in The Times that a new honours degree in the history of art was to be established at the University of London.

In 1932 she became one of its first four students of the history of art. She followed her undergraduate degree with a postgraduate thesis on the rise of Neo-Classical architecture in England. Her first job in 1939 was as registrar of the City and Guilds of London Art School. During the war she continued in this post part-time, but also worked as a clerk in the family firm.

In 1944 she was married to David Lewis, a childhood friend and a medical entomologist, while he was on leave from the Sudan. She was able to return to the Sudan with him because she was offered a two-year post as confidential clerk and librarian at the Agricultural Research Institute at Wad Medani, which was to be her home for the next 11 years. She exchanged the frugality of English postwar life for the rigours of trekking with David all over the Sudan, so that he could investigate insects that transmit tropical diseases. Finding that she had time on her hands, she started to read law by correspondence and was called to the Bar in 1956. Although she never used the qualification professionally, the knowledge she gained was invaluable to her in her later public work.

After Sudanese independence she returned to London, researching the unexplored relationship of the Old Pretender’s Court in Rome to British art and patronage through the Grand Tour. She discovered a mass of material in the Public Record Office in London and in the archives of the Holy Roman Empire in Vienna. From this she put together a well-received book, Connoisseurs and Secret Agents in Eighteenth Century Rome (1961).

Lewis was elected in 1964 to the Society of Antiquaries, which became her spiritual home. She served the society with unswerving generosity, on council in the 1960s, as vice-president from 1980 to 1984 and providing advice and support to the Morris Committee, which gives grants to churches. She was awarded the society’s medal for outstanding services in 2002. She had been a member of the Georgian Group since 1938, one year after its foundation. She relished being a member of the Georgian Group’s visits and receptions sub-committee from 1966 to 1979, was chairman from 1972 to 1979 and from 1972 to 1981 sat on the group’s executive committee.

She was vice-president of the Royal Archaeological Institute, served on committees of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and was a trustee of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

Lewis continued to accompany her husband on his visits to tropical countries, fitting her own studies and commitments around these trips. In Jamaica, for example, she made a study of Georgian funerary sculpture that led to the beginnings of the Georgian Society of Jamaica. As her husband’s health declined she became increasingly involved in the Chelsea Society, which she had joined as a life member in 1966. She was chairman of the society in 1980-87.

Her husband predeceased her. They had no children.