PORTRAIT OF FRUSTRATION - IT'S ANDREW LEWIS JR.

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 1, 1993                   TAG: 9303010028
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
PORTRAIT OF FRUSTRATION - IT'S ANDREW LEWIS JR.
The Roanoke Valley History Museum has a portrait of Andrew Lewis, but not the Andrew Lewis it had hoped for.
There are no known likenesses of the Indian fighter, Revolutionary War general and Salem favorite son.
So when a direct descendant of Lewis gave the museum a portrait that the family said was of Andrew Lewis, museum Executive Director Nancy Connelly was ecstatic.
But experts believe the portrait was done too late to be a likeness of Lewis, who died a few weeks before the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. The portrait more likely is of Lewis' son, Andrew Lewis Jr.
In 1992, Richard John Hughes of New York City gave the museum a miniature portrait on ivory of a pug-nosed man with dark hair and wearing a blue-and-white uniform that appeared to be 18th-century.
The donation was made in the memory of Hughes' mother, Agatha Lucille King. The family can be traced directly to Andrew Lewis and had believed that this was indeed a portrait of the bold Indian fighter.
However, museums require more concrete substantiation. Board member Paul Frantz agreed to research the miniature.
He contacted Robin Bolton-Smith, associate curator of the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.
Bolton-Smith believes that the painting most likely was done after 1795. "First, of all, the setting looks typical in size and design to the cases used during the Federal period at the turn of the century," she wrote.
"Pre-1795 miniatures were more densely painted in darker tonalities.
"The fact that the hair is its natural color rather than powdered suggests the newer fashion at the turn of the century. It was rare to see portraits still with powdered hair after 1800.
"In my opinion, the miniature is painted in the style of the miniature painter Francis Rabineau, who was active in New York City in the early 1790s."
Rabineau also painted in the South. He was in North Carolina in the late 1790s and in Richmond and Lynchburg in the early 1800s.
"The dress of the sitter, the high collar, indicates the fashion of the 1790s to early in the next decade," Bolton-Smith continued.
"This dating would make it impossible to be Andrew Lewis and more likely to be the next generation of the Lewis family."
Frantz also contacted the museum division of the Department of the Army's Center of Military History about the uniform depicted in the miniature. Researchers there concluded that the uniform is post-Revolutionary War, probably circa 1790, and is that of a captain in the militia - not a general. Andrew Lewis Jr. held the rank of captain and later became a colonel but rose no higher.
Still, the museum is glad to have the miniature, which has been appraised at $800. It's artistically pleasant and has historic value in its own right as an image of an early settler in the area. Andrew Lewis Jr. also was an Indian fighter, though not as well-known as his father, and a prominent landowner. He built the first house on Bent Mountain, where he owned thousands of acres.
There's also a likeness of Andrew Lewis Jr., who died in 1844, in George Jack's "History of Roanoke County." It bears more than a passing resemblance to the man in the miniature.
"Everybody kept remarking: `Gee, it looks like Andrew Lewis Jr.,' " Connelly says.
"Now we know why. You just never know until you bring in the experts and go over the piece."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB