Maud Lewis Covered Bridge Print | Nova Scotia Folk Art Giclee

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Two years before a Star Weekly article would transform Maud Lewis from an unknown Maritime painter into a national treasure, she created this intimate winter scene that captured something quietly disappearing from Nova Scotia—the covered bridge. While three horse-drawn sleighs make their journey through the wooden tunnel toward a village glowing with color, Lewis documented a Maritime tradition that was vanishing even as she painted it. By the late 1960s, Nova Scotia's last covered bridge would be demolished, replaced by modern steel and concrete structures. In 1962, at age 59, she was still selling these paintings for two or three dollars from her roadside cottage, unaware that this very composition would one day appear on Canadian postage stamps and command the attention of museums and collectors worldwide.
The covered bridge held particular significance in Maritime life—not merely as infrastructure, but as threshold spaces where sleigh travelers passed from winter's bite into brief shelter before emerging again into the cold. Lewis returned to this subject repeatedly throughout the 1960s, creating what art historian Alan Deacon calls "serial images"—successful compositions she would revisit with subtle variations. This 1962 version, painted in the earlier period of the series, shows Lewis's developing mastery of the motif. Later versions would incorporate blue shadowing around the conifers, but in 1962 she kept the palette simpler, more direct, letting the red-roofed houses and the deep evergreen forest speak for themselves.
Working from her corner in the one-room Marshalltown cottage she shared with Everett, Lewis painted memories of a Nova Scotia she had experienced in childhood—when her father John's blacksmith shop created the iron fittings for harnesses that would have adorned horses exactly like these, when covered bridges were commonplace rather than rare, when the rhythm of rural life moved at sleigh-speed rather than highway-speed. Her arthritis had progressed enough to shape her distinctive brushstrokes but had not yet robbed her of her right hand's mobility—that loss would come in 1965, the year of the CBC documentary that would cement her fame.
The composition demonstrates Lewis's intuitive understanding of color and movement. The dark mouth of the covered bridge creates dramatic contrast against the snow, drawing the eye toward the warmth of the village beyond. Three sleighs in different positions suggest the continuous flow of traffic through this communal passage, each journey a small story. The evergreens frame the scene with vertical strength, their deep green establishing depth against the white winter landscape. True to her style, Lewis painted without shadows or perspective tricks, creating instead a flattened, decorative space where every element shares equal visual weight—the bridge's dark timbers, the horses' motion, the cheerful houses waiting at journey's end.
This painting carries the quiet melancholy of documentation. When Lewis set brush to board in 1962, she was recording not fantasy but fading memory—covered bridges that "kissing bridge" romance aside, were already being torn down to make way for wider roads and heavier traffic. The very structure that protected wooden deck surfaces from Maritime weather was being sacrificed to progress. Within her lifetime, this scene would transform from familiar sight to nostalgic symbol, much like Lewis herself would transform from anonymous painter to celebrated Canadian icon.
Our museum-quality Giclee reproduction preserves every detail of Lewis's boat enamel technique—the deliberate, arthritis-shaped brushstrokes, the pure unmixed colors applied straight from the tube, the folk art directness that refused academic pretension. Printed on archival paper using fade-resistant inks, this reproduction honors both Lewis's original vision and the historical moment it captured.
This print speaks to collectors who understand that folk art often serves as cultural archive, preserving not through academic study but through painted memory the textures of daily life that photographs miss and historians overlook. It resonates with those who appreciate Maritime history, covered bridge enthusiasts, and anyone drawn to Lewis's particular genius for transforming simple subjects into images that feel both documentary and dreamlike. For homes seeking artwork that connects Canadian heritage with personal warmth, this covered bridge scene offers passage between past and present, between the world Lewis knew and the world we've inherited. It's winter pastoral and historical record, folk art and time capsule, painted in 1962 when both the bridges and their painter still worked quietly, unaware they would both become treasured symbols of Maritime Canada.