Henry Lewis (artist)

[1] Lewis was born in Newport, Wales or Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, England, on January 12, 1819, according to Joseph Earl Arrington.

[3] Lewis's family immigrated about 1833 to Boston, Massachusetts, where he was apprenticed to a carpenter.

Between 1846 and 1848, Lewis sketched and painted hundreds of scenes of the Mississippi River.

These included rare views, such as the Mormon Temple at Nauvoo, Illinois (burned 1848), and the great St. Louis Fire of 1849.

Lewis developed his sketches into a giant moving panorama – 12 feet by 1,300 feet – which was unrolled, with music and narration, before theater audiences in the United States and Europe.