Edmonia Lewis
The first African-American woman sculptor to achieve prominence
Although
women's place in the arts was fairly secure by the second half of
the nineteenth century, women sculptors were still relatively
rare and women producing monumental stone sculpture were
extremely rare. With no true Art Academy available at home,
American sculptors frequently pursued and succeeded in their
profession with little or no formal training. This was especially
true of women, who still were denied access to vital anatomy
drawing classes. It thus seems quite remarkable that the first
woman African American sculptor to achieve prominence in America
would appear during this time.
Edmonia Lewis (also known as Mary Edmonia Lewis) was most likely born between 1843 and 1845. While the exact place of her birth is unknown, the most probable is in New York State near Albany. Many important facts about her early and later life are equally as obscure. This lack of concrete information about her early life and later years, plus a scarcity of surviving works, together lend an aura of mystery to Lewis's existence. Nevertheless, even the facts that are known and generally accepted about her point to an exceptional life for a woman of her time.
Her father was a free African American and her mother was at least part Chippewa Indian. She was orphaned at about three years of age. A later account claims she was raised until the age of twelve by her mother's people, roaming, hunting and fishing with the tribe. Because her gender and ethnic background would have positioned her near the bottom of the nineteenth century American social ladder, it is remarkable that she overcame enormous odds to become a skilled and imaginative sculptor.
In 1857, Lewis attended boarding school in Albany, New York with the financial assistance of her older brother Samuel who had prospered in the California gold rush. With further financial help from Samuel, Edmonia applied to and was accepted for admission at Oberlin College's Young Ladies Preparatory Department in 1859. Founded in 1833 by liberal Congregationalists, Oberlin was the first institute of higher education in the United States to admit women. By 1835, race was no longer a barrier to admission at Oberlin, which had become a center for abolitionists and other liberal Christian causes. During her years at Oberlin, Edmonia's talent for drawing emerged. But her schooling was unfortunately interrupted by two incidents, one of which placed in her life in grave danger.
First she was accused of stealing paintbrushes from an art teacher. Then in a more serious incident, she was accused of poisoning two white women who were by various accounts either her roommates or closest friends. She was defended against the latter charge by prominent African American lawyer John Mercer Langston, who later served as a U.S. Congressman and Minister to Haiti. Although acquitted of both charges, Lewis was not permitted to graduate. She was also subsequently severely beaten in the town of Oberlin, probably in a racist backlash reaction to her acquittal of the murder charges.
Lewis moved to Boston in 1863 where she was reported to be fascinated by a life-sized statue of Benjamin Franklin at City Hall and vowed to learn to create such works herself. The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison introduced her to sculptor Edward Brackett, who became her first mentor. Lewis's earliest sculptures were medallions with portraits of white antislavery leaders and Civil War heroes, which she modeled in clay and cast in plaster. Her portrait bust of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (1865, Museum of Afro-American History, Boston) depicted the prominent young Bostonian as he led an all-black battalion, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment, in battle against Confederate forces. Sales of 100 plaster replicas of the bust enabled Lewis to travel to Italy in 1865, where she established a studio in Rome.
Although she associated with several well-known American sculptors, including Hiram Powers and William Wetmore Story, Lewis was accepted by and forged closer ties with other women artists who lived there at the time, such as Harriet Hosmer and Anne Whitney. This group was collectively dubbed the "white marmorean flock" by Henry James. James reserved particularly harsh criticism for Lewis, claiming in his 1903 William Wetmore Story and His Friends that the primary reason for Lewis's fame was the novelty of her race.
Such harsh criticisms aside, Lewis nevertheless experienced greater artistic freedom as a woman and a black in Rome. With access to the wealth of resources for sculptors Rome offered, particularly the many works of the ancient Greeks, Lewis continued to develop as a sculptor. She became internationally known for her portraits of abolitionists and for her depictions of ethnic and religious themes. Although she returned frequently to America to show and sell her works, Lewis became a permanent expatriate by 1880. By the turn of the century, she was virtually forgotten. Lewis was last reported living in Rome in 1911, but where and when she died is unknown.
The high
point of Lewis's career was the completion in Rome of the statue
'The Death of Cleopatra' (at left), which created a sensation
when displayed at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.
While other sculptors generally depicted Cleopatra contemplating
death, Lewis showed Cleopatra seated upon her throne at the
moment or after her death, her head thrown back. In her right
hand Cleopatra holds the poisonous snake that has bitten her,
while her left arm hangs lifelessly. This realistic portrayal ran
contrary to the sentimentality about death that was prevalent at
the time. Of it, William J. Clark said, "The effects of death are
represented with such skill as to be absolutely repellant - and
it is a question of whether a statue of the ghastly
characteristics of this one does not overstep the bounds of
legitimate art." 1
Critics and art scholars cite a variety of probable reasons for Lewis's radical departure from the usual depiction of Cleopatra. Perhaps as a result of her own tribulations she identified with the vision of Cleopatra as the proud queen who has chosen a defiant response to powerlessness and a ruler in control of her own demise, even in death. Lewis's attempt to make the connection between her own African ethnicity and the African elements of Egypt is also cited as a unique influence in the work. But whatever her motivation for this depiction, the effect drew strong response from the statue's viewers and was generally acknowledged as the work of a highly skilled artist. According to author Nancy Heller, Cleopatra was called the "grandest statue in the exhibition." 2 After the Centennial, Cleopatra was next shown to similar acclaim in Chicago in 1878.
When the Chicago exhibition ended, historians speculate Lewis, who was unable to sell the two-ton statue and probably couldn't afford to ship it back to Rome, put it in storage. The warehouse company, probably unable or unwilling to bear the cost of continuing storage without reimbursement from Lewis, who had returned to Europe, eventually sold the statue. The statue thus began a long exile during which it was assumed lost or destroyed.
The sculpture was reportedly displayed by a Chicago saloon in 1892. Racehorse owner John Condon later acquired it and installed it on the grave of his favorite horse Cleopatra, at his racetrack in the Chicago suburb of Forest Park. Condon inserted a covenant in the property's deed that required the statue to remain in place in perpetuity. It survived the property's use as a golf course and World War II torpedo plant.
When the U.S. Postal Service built a facility on the property in the 1970's, 'Cleopatra' was finally moved to a contractor's storage yard in nearby Cicero. A local fire inspector was intrigued by the sculpture and a subsequent newspaper article brought the work to the attention of the Historical Society of Forest Park, which acquired it in 1985. The Society's head identified Lewis as the sculptor and made inquiries about her at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and elsewhere. Shortly afterward, an author's query by Marilyn Richardson, a scholar of African American history, caught the attention of a curator at the Metropolitan Museum who recalled the previous inquiry. Richardson identified the sculpture and once certain of its creator, mounted a campaign to bring the discovery to the attention of scholars and the public. Ultimately, the Historical Society of Forest Park donated 'Cleopatra' to the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art in 1994. NMAA spent $30,000 to restore Cleopatra to an approximation of its original condition and the sculpture became the centerpiece of a small exhibition devoted to Lewis at the Washington, D.C. museum.
In the wake of the excitement generated by the location and restoration of 'The Death of Cleopatra', there has been renewed interest in Lewis, particularly the ethnological aspects of her work. Art historian Marilyn Richardson notes, "She wrapped herself and her work in the cloak of Anglo-European art, literature, religion and cultural traditions, into which she incorporated the sculptural representation of an African and later Native American presence. In doing so, she stood against the erotic exploitation of the non-white female body as the exotic other." 3 There is also ongoing analysis and discussion of the meaning of differences in her depictions of racial identities in the male and female characters in her works and in apparent shifts of her own ethnic identification throughout the course of her life.
Because of the scarcity of her surviving works and the anecdotal nature of many details of her life, it is easy let Lewis's amazing story eclipse recognition of her work's artistic merit. But to concentrate on only the social aspects of Edmonia Lewis and her career seems short-sighted. There is obvious value in recalling Lewis's inspiration and determination in overcoming the many obstacles she faced. But for those who are also interested in the sociological aspects of art history, researching her works also offers a rich opportunity to assess how her self-vision and perspectives, so unique for artists of her time, contributed to the evolution of nineteenth-century neo-classical sculpture.
FOOTNOTES
1 William J. Clark, Great American
Sculpture, 1878, quoted by Stephen May, “The Object at Hand”,
Smithsonian Magazine 27 (September, 1996): p. 16.
2 Nancy Heller, Women Artists: An
Illustrated History, New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, Third
Edition, 1997, p. 87.
3 Marilyn Richardson, "Edmonia
Lewis's The Death of Cleopatra”. The International Review of
African American Art 12, no. 2 (1995): 36–52.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Buick, Kirsten P. "The Ideal Works of Edmonia Lewis: Invoking and
Inverting Autobiography".
American Art 9 (Summer 1995): 5-19.
Gaze, Delia, ed. Dictionary of Women Artists, Volume 2.
London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997.
Gerdts, William H. American Neo_Classic Sculpture: The Marble
Resurrection.
New York: The Viking Press, 1973
Heller, Nancy G. Women Artists: An Illustrated History.
New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, Third Edition, 1997.
May, Stephen. "The Object at Hand".
Smithsonian Magazine 27 (September, 1996): 16, 18, 20.
Richardson, Marilyn. "Edmonia Lewis's The Death of
Cleopatra".
The International Review of African American Art 12, no. 2
(1995): 36-52.
Portrait Image
Edmonia Lewis ca.1870s
Henry Rocher, Reproduction from original 3 5/8" x 2 1/16" albumen
silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Edmonia Lewis: Sculptor, by Dean Ennis 2002-01-21
for "A Historical Survey of Women Artists", Chestnut Hill
College
