Lewis was a founder member of the Vorticist group, a literary and artistic movement which celebrated the values of energy and violence of the 'modern' machine age. Like the Italian Futurist model, this translated into near abstract compositions, with angular, emphatic lines and planes.|Commissioned in the Royal Garrison Artillery in March 1916, Lewis served as a Battery Officer on the Western Front between May and November 1917, in direct contact with the most modern machinery of the war. In December he was appointed as an official artist for the Canadian War Memorials Fund, who sent him to Vimy Ridge, where he experienced an uncharacteristically quiet time between January and March 1918. He completed the necessary sketches and on his return from France was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee to do a large picture of siege artillery.

RGA

Slade School of Art

First World War 1918, 1919 Ministry of Information commission, Scheme 1 (single picture only). Commission administration transferred to the Imperial War Museum Second World War 1943 Specially employed by the War Artists Advisory Committee to undertake one painting