Lewis Teague (painter)
American artist
Rudolph Lewis Teague (November 30, 1917, in Jamaica, New York – April 14, 1978 Fayston, Vermont) was an American painter from the Second Generation New York School.
Biography
Rudolph Lewis Teague was born November 30, 1917, in Jamaica, Queens, New York City, to Cecilia Fehon Teague and Walter Dorwin Teague, their youngest son. He attended P.S. 1 (now known as P.S. 001 Alfred E. Smith) elementary school, then Gow School for Dyslexia and Learning Disabilities (now known as the Gow School) boarding school in Upstate New York as ordered by his father to correct his left-handedness.
Teague married fellow Art Student's League painter, Mary Lee Abbott in 1943, while home on leave from the United States Army, where he served as a gunnery sergeant at a range in New Mexico. Teague left the Army in 1945 at the end of the war, and he and Abbott separated in 1946.
Teague attended Pratt Institute briefly to study architecture but, while in New Mexico on a painting excursion near Taos, instructor Tom Benrimo told the architecture student that he had a "painters eye", and perhaps he should focus on painting, instead. Teague took Benrimo's advice, and returned to the Art Students League of New York, where he met and fell in love with Virginia Vanderbilt, a graduate of U of W and of Seattle, WA. At the Art Students League of New York he found Morris Kantor as a mentor and teacher, and admired Barnet Newman. He rented Arshile Gorky's studio after the artist died in 1948. DeKooning and Rothko were part of the crowd, and later Teague would visit them in the Hamptons with his new wife, Virginia, and daughters Allison and Cecelia.
In 1948, Teague contracted polio affecting his thigh and stomach muscles, as well as losing the use of his left arm, his painting hand.
“Lewis Teague (painter)” enters the record as american artist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lewis, Teague and painter can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16008466. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917, 1978, 1943 and 1945.
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