LEWIS, GEORGE ROBERT (1782–1871), painter of landscapes and portraits, younger brother of Frederick Christian Lewis [q. v.] and of Charles Lewis [q. v.], the bookbinder, was born in London on 27 March 1782. He studied under Fuseli in the schools of the Royal Academy, and sent landscapes to the exhibitions of 1805–7; he at that time resided with his brother Frederick at Enfield, and was employed with him upon Chamberlaine's ‘Original Designs of the most celebrated Masters’ and Ottley's ‘Italian School of Design,’ for both of which works he executed some good aquatint plates. In 1818 Lewis accompanied Dr. Dibdin, in the capacity of draughtsman, on his continental journey, and his illustrations to the ‘Bibliographical and Picturesque Tour through France and Germany,’ published in 1821, form the most valuable part of that work. From other sketches which he made at the same time he etched a series of clever ‘Groups illustrating the Physiognomy, Manners, and Character of the People of France and Germany,’ which was issued in parts, and completed in 1823. Lewis had previously executed some of the plates for Dibdin's ‘Bibliographical Decameron,’ 1817, in which he and his brothers Frederick and Charles are highly eulogised. He was a very versatile artist and an enthusiastic student both of nature and antiquities. From 1820 to 1859 he exhibited portraits, landscapes, and figure subjects at the Royal Academy, the British Institution, the Suffolk Street Gallery, and the Oil and Water-colour Society, and he published, among other works, ‘Views of the Muscles of the Human Body,’ 1820; ‘Banks of the Loire illustrated—Tours;’ ‘Illustrations of Phrenology,’ 1841; ‘Illustrations of Kilpeck Church, Herefordshire, with an Essay on Ecclesiastical Design and a Descriptive Interpretation,’ 1842; ‘The Ancient Font of Little Walsingham Church,’ 1843; and ‘The Ancient Church of Shobdon, Herefordshire, illustrated and described,’ 1852; reissued in 1856. Several of Lewis's portraits have been engraved, and he aquatinted a large plate of the procession of the knights of the order of the Bath in Westminster Abbey, after F. Nash. In 1838 Lewis printed at Hereford ‘An Address on the subject of Education as connected with Design in every department of British Manufacture, together with Hints on the Education of the Poor generally.’ He died at Hampstead on 15 May 1871.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1880; Dibdin's Bibliographical Decameron, 1817, ii. 520; Roget's Hist. of the Old Water-colour Soc.; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
LEWIS GLYN COTHI (fl. 1450–1486), Welsh bard, also sometimes called Lewis y Glyn or Llywelyn Glyn Cothi, was a native of the Vale of Cothi in Carmarthenshire, whence, according to Welsh bardic custom, he derived his name. He is said to have lived at Pwlltinbyd, near Caio, and espousing the Lancastrian side in the wars of the roses, he served as an officer under Jasper, earl of Pembroke, to whom he dedicated several of his poems. The ravages of the civil war compelled him to seek refuge at Chester. He married a widow there, and intended to make the city his home, but on the day following his marriage the citizens, under some pretence or other, took from him all his household furniture and drove him out of the city. Thereupon he wrote several poems addressed to different Welsh leaders, urging them to revenge his injury, and one Reinalt of the Tower accordingly made a raid upon Chester. Lewis removed to Flint, but there too the English inhabitants maltreated him, and Lewis addressed them in a satiric poem of great pungency. He was, however, more hospitably received on returning to Llwydiarth, near Llanerchymedd, Anglesea. On the accession of Henry VII in 1485 he appears to have returned to Carmarthenshire, where he is said to have died not long after, and to have been buried at Abergwilly. A volume of his poems was published for the Cymmrodorion Society in 1837 (London, 8vo), under the editorship of the Revs. Walter Davies and John Jones (Tegid) [q. v.], but it contains no biographical notice of the writer, nor any account of the manuscripts from which the poems were transcribed. This volume contains about 150 poems, chiefly selected on account of the value of their historical and genealogical information; they are perhaps the best existing source of information about the part played by the Welsh in the wars of the roses (cf. Gairdner, Richard III, pp. 171, 277). There still remain unpublished a great number of his poems, many of which are in the Myvyrian collection in the Addit. MSS. of the British Museum. Hengwrt MSS. 37, 52, and 304, in the Peniarth collection, are supposed to be in his autograph, and poems by him are included in other manuscripts (18, 166, 247–248, 252, 270–1). Three poems, previously unpublished, are found in ‘Cymru,’ i. 115, and show that Lewis was a popular poet as well as a herald-bard.
