Mary Edmonia Lewis (c. July 4, 1844 – September 17, 1907) was an American sculptor who worked for most of her career in Rome, Italy. She is the first woman of African-American and Native American heritage to achieve international fame and recognition as a sculptor in the fine arts world. Her work is known for incorporating themes relating to black people and indigenous peoples of the Americas into Neoclassical style sculpture.
She emerged during the crisis-filled days of the Civil War, and by the end of the 19th century, she was the only black woman who had participated in and been recognized to any degree by the American artistic mainstream. In 2002, the scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Edmonia Lewis on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans
Biography
Early life
By the time Lewis reached the age of nine, both of her parents had died. Her father died in 1847.[6] Her two maternal aunts adopted Lewis and her older half brother Samuel. Samuel was born in 1835 to Lewis's father and his first wife in Haiti; that family came to the United States when Samuel was a young child.[6] Samuel became a barber at age 12 when his father died.[6] The children remained with their aunts near Niagara Falls for approximately four years. Lewis and her aunts sold Ojibwe baskets and other souvenirs, such as moccasins and blouses, to tourists visiting Niagara Falls, Toronto, and Buffalo. During this time, Lewis went by her Native American name, Wildfire, while her brother was called Sunshine
In 1852 Samuel left for San Francisco, California, leaving Lewis in the care of a Captain S. R. Mills, although Samuel continually provided money for her board and education. Later, in 1856, Lewis enrolled at New York Central College, McGrawville, a Baptist abolitionist school.[7] During her summer term there in 1858, Lewis took classes in the Primary Department in order to prepare for courses she would later take in collegiate programs. In a later interview, Lewis claimed after three years at the school, she left when she was "declared to be wild
Education
In 1859 when Lewis was about 15 years old, her brother Samuel and abolitionists sent her to Oberlin College, where she changed her name to Mary Edmonia Lewis.[5][8] At the time, Oberlin College was one of the first higher learning institutions in the United States to admit women and people of differing ethnicities. Lewis's decision to attend Oberlin was one that would significantly change her life, as that is where she began her art studies.[9] Lewis boarded with Reverend John Keep and his wife from 1859 until she left the college in 1863. Reverend Keep was white and a member of the board of trustees, but was also an avid abolitionist and spokesperson for coeducation.[8] During the 1859-60 school year, Lewis enrolled in the Young Ladies' Preparatory Department, which was designed "to give Young Ladies facilities for the thorough mental discipline, and the special training which will qualify them for teaching and other duties of their sphere."[10]
During winter of 1862, several months after the start of the Civil War, Edmonia Lewis was attending Oberlin College when an incident occurred between her and two classmates, Maria Miles and Christina Ennes. The three women, who boarded in the home of Oberlin trustee John Keep, planned to go sleigh riding with some young men later that day. Before the sleighing, Lewis served her friends a drink of spiced wine. Shortly after, Miles and Ennes fell severely ill. Doctors examined them and concluded that the two women had some sort of poison in their system, apparently cantharides, a reputed aphrodisiac. For a time it was not certain that they would survive. Days later, it became apparent that the two women would recover from the incident, and, because of their recovery, the authorities initially took no action.
News of the controversial incident rapidly spread throughout Ohio. The townspeople of Oberlin did not hold the same progressive views of the college. Prior to her six-day long trial, anti-abolitionist vigilantes physically assaulted Lewis. While she was walking home alone one night, she was dragged into an open field by unknown assailants and badly beaten.[11] Those responsible for her injuries were never found.[12] Due to the attack, local authorities arrested Lewis, charging her with poisoning her friends. The college defended their student throughout the trial. John Mercer Langston, an Oberlin College alumnus, and the only practicing African-American lawyer in Oberlin, represented Lewis during her trial. Although most witnesses spoke against her and she did not testify, the jury acquitted her of the charges.[11]
The remainder of Lewis' time at Oberlin was marked with isolation and prejudice. Also, about a year after the trial, Lewis was accused of stealing artists' materials from the college. She was acquitted due to lack of evidence, but not fully cleared. She was forbidden from registering for her last term by the principal of the Young Ladies' Course, Marianne Dascomb, which prevented Lewis from graduating
Art career
Boston
After college, Lewis moved to Boston in early 1864, where she began to pursue her career as a sculptor. The Keeps wrote a letter of introduction on Lewis' behalf to William Lloyd Garrison in Boston, and he was able to introduce her to already established sculptors in the area, as well as writers who then publicized Lewis in the abolitionist press
Lewis was inspired by the lives of abolitionists and Civil War heroes. Her subjects in 1863 and 1864 included some of the most famous abolitionists of her day: John Brown and Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.[20] When she met Union Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commander of an African American Civil War regiment from Massachusetts, she was inspired to create a bust of his likeness, which impressed the Shaw family, who purchased her homage.[21] Lewis then made plaster cast reproductions of the bust; she sold one hundred at 15 dollars apiece.[22] Anna Quincy Waterston, a poet, then wrote a poem about both Lewis and Shaw.
Early works that proved highly popular included medallion portraits of the abolitionists John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison. Lewis also drew inspiration from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his work, particularly his epic poem The Song of Hiawatha. She made several busts of its leading characters, which he drew from Ojibwe legend.
Rome
The success and popularity of these works in Boston allowed Lewis to bear the cost of a trip to Rome in 1866.[25] On her 1865 passport is written, "M. Edmonia Lewis is a Black girl sent by subscription to Italy having displayed great talents as a sculptor".[2] The established sculptor Hiram Powers gave her space to work in his studio.[26] She entered a circle of expatriate artists and established her own space within the former studio of 18th-century Italian sculptor Antonio Canova.[27] She received professional support from both Charlotte Cushman, a Boston actress and a pivotal figure for expatriate sculptors in Rome, and Maria Weston Chapman, a dedicated worker for the anti-slavery cause
Rome was where Lewis spent most of her adult career. Italy’s less pronounced racism allowed increased opportunity to a black artist [30]. She began sculpting in marble, working within the neoclassical manner, but focusing on naturalism within themes and images relating to black and American Indian people.[31] The surroundings of the classical world greatly inspired her and influenced her work, in which she recreated the classical art style. For instance, she presented people in her sculptures as draped in robes rather than in contemporary clothing
Lewis was unique in the way she approached sculpting abroad. She insisted on enlarging her clay and wax models in marble herself, rather than hire native Italian sculptors to do it for her, which was the common practice. Male sculptors were largely skeptical of the talent of female sculptors, and often accused them of not doing their own work.[33] Harriet Hosmer, a fellow sculptor and expatriate, also did this. Lewis also was known to make sculptures before receiving commissions for them, or sent unsolicited works to Boston patrons requesting that they raise funds for materials and shipping.[31]
Her work sold for large sums of money. In 1873 an article in the New Orleans Picayune stated: "Edmonia Lewis had snared two 50,000-dollar commissions." Her new-found popularity made her studio a tourist destination.[34] Lewis had many major exhibitions during her rise to fame, including one in Chicago, Illinois, in 1870, and in Rome in 1871
Later career
A major coup in her career was participating in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.[35]For this, she created a monumental 3,015-pound marble sculpture, The Death of Cleopatra, which portrayed the queen in the throes of death.[36] Of the piece, J. S. Ingraham wrote that Cleopatra was "the most remarkable piece of sculpture in the American section" of the Exposition.[37] Much of the viewing public was shocked by Lewis’s frank portrayal of death, but the statue drew thousands of viewers.[38] Cleopatra was considered a woman of both sensuous beauty and demonic power.[39] Her self-annihilation has been portrayed numerously in art as well as literature and cinema. In Death of Cleopatra, Edmonia Lewis added an innovative flair by portraying the Egyptian queen in a disheveled, inelegant manner, a departure from the Victorian approach of representing death.[40] Although her white contemporaries were also sculpting Cleopatra and other comparable subject matter (such as Harriet Hosmer’s Zenobia), Lewis was more prone to scrutiny on the premise of race and gender due to the fact that she, like Cleopatra, was female:
"The associations between Cleopatra and a black Africa were so profound that… any depiction of the ancient Egyptian queen had to contend with the issue of her race and the potential expectation of her blackness. Lewis’ white queen gained the aura of historical accuracy through primary research without sacrificing its symbolic links to abolitionism, black Africa, or black diaspora. But what it refused to facilitate was the racial objectification of the artist’s body. Lewis could not so readily become the subject of her own representation if her subject was corporeally white."
A testament to Lewis's renown as an artist came in 1877, when former US President Ulysses S. Grant commissioned her to do his portrait. He sat for her as a model and was pleased with her finished piece.[46] She also contributed a bust of Charles Sumner to the 1895 Atlanta Exposition.[47]
In the late 1880s, neoclassicism declined in popularity, as did the popularity of Lewis's artwork. She continued sculpting in marble, increasingly creating altarpieces and other works for Roman Catholic patrons. In the art world, she became eclipsed by history and lost fame. By 1901 she had moved to London.[48] The events of her later years are not known.
Reception
As a black artist, Edmonia Lewis had to be conscious of her stylistic choices because her largely white audience often gravely misread her work as self-portraiture. In order to avoid this, her female figures typically possess European features.[30] Lewis had to balance her own personal identity with her artistic, social, and national identity, a tiring activity that affected her art.[49] She had to meet the expectations of art world while avoiding being pigeon-holed into the inescapable categories of being just an "artist of color" or a "lady sculptor".
"It is hard to overstate the visual incongruity of the black-Native female body, let alone that identity in a sculptor, within the Roman colony. As the first black-Native sculptor of either sex to achieve international recognition within a western sculptural tradition, Lewis was a symbolic and social anomaly within a dominantly white bourgeois and aristocratic community."
Family
Lewis never married and had no known children.[50] Her half-brother Samuel became a barber in San Francisco, eventually moving to mining camps in Idaho and Montana. In 1868, he settled in the city of Bozeman, Montana, where he set up a barber shop on Main Street. He prospered, eventually investing in commercial real estate, and subsequently built his own home which still stands at 308 South Bozeman Avenue. In 1999 the Samuel Lewis House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1884, he married Mrs. Melissa Railey Bruce, a widow with six children. The couple had one son, Samuel E. Lewis (1886–1914), who married but died childless. The elder Lewis died after "a short illness" in 1896 and is buried in Sunset Hills Cemetery in Bozeman
Work
escriptions of most popular works[edit]
Forever Free, 1867
This white marble sculpture represents a man standing, staring up, and raising his left arm into the air. Wrapped around his left wrist is a chain; however, this chain is not restraining him. To his right is a woman kneeling with her hands held in a prayer position. The man’s right hand is gently placed on her right shoulder. Forever Free represents the emancipation of African-American slaves after the Civil War, a celebration of black liberation, salvation, and redemption. Lewis attempted to break stereotypes of African-American women with this sculpture. For example, she portrayed the woman as completely dressed while the man was partially dressed. This drew attention away from the notion of African-American women being sexual figures. This sculpture also symbolizes the end of the Civil War. While African Americans were legally free, they continued to be restrained, shown by the fact that the couple had chains wrapped around their bodies. The representation of race and gender has been critiqued by modern scholars, particularly the Eurocentric features of the female figure. This piece is held by Howard University Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[55]
This white marble sculpture represents a man standing, staring up, and raising his left arm into the air. Wrapped around his left wrist is a chain; however, this chain is not restraining him. To his right is a woman kneeling with her hands held in a prayer position. The man’s right hand is gently placed on her right shoulder. Forever Free represents the emancipation of African-American slaves after the Civil War, a celebration of black liberation, salvation, and redemption. Lewis attempted to break stereotypes of African-American women with this sculpture. For example, she portrayed the woman as completely dressed while the man was partially dressed. This drew attention away from the notion of African-American women being sexual figures. This sculpture also symbolizes the end of the Civil War. While African Americans were legally free, they continued to be restrained, shown by the fact that the couple had chains wrapped around their bodies. The representation of race and gender has been critiqued by modern scholars, particularly the Eurocentric features of the female figure. This piece is held by Howard University Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[55]
Hagar, 1868
Inspired by a character from the Old Testament, this was made of white marble. It shows Hagar with her hands in prayer and staring slightly up but not straight across. Hagar was the handmaid or slave of Abraham's wife Sarah. Being unable to conceive a child, Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham so that he could have a son by her. Hagar gave birth to Abraham's firstborn son Ishmael. After Sarah gave birth to her own son Isaac, she resented Hagar and made Abraham "cast Hagar into the wilderness". Lewis uses Hagar to symbolize the African mother in the United States. She represented the abuse of African women. Lewis had a tendency to sculpt historically strong women, as demonstrated not just in Hagar but also in Lewis's Cleopatra piece. Lewis also depicted regular women in great situations, emphasizing their strength.[50]
Inspired by a character from the Old Testament, this was made of white marble. It shows Hagar with her hands in prayer and staring slightly up but not straight across. Hagar was the handmaid or slave of Abraham's wife Sarah. Being unable to conceive a child, Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham so that he could have a son by her. Hagar gave birth to Abraham's firstborn son Ishmael. After Sarah gave birth to her own son Isaac, she resented Hagar and made Abraham "cast Hagar into the wilderness". Lewis uses Hagar to symbolize the African mother in the United States. She represented the abuse of African women. Lewis had a tendency to sculpt historically strong women, as demonstrated not just in Hagar but also in Lewis's Cleopatra piece. Lewis also depicted regular women in great situations, emphasizing their strength.[50]
Old Arrow-Maker and his Daughter, 1866
This sculpture was inspired by Lewis's Native American heritage. An arrow-maker and his daughter sit on a round base. They are dressed in traditional Native American clothes and the male figure has recognizable Native American facial features. Lewis chose to "whitewash" the facial features of her female figures, removing all facial features associated with "colored" races.[56] Lewis pushed the limits with the accuracy of her sculptures. She wanted to be as realistic as possible.[50]
This sculpture was inspired by Lewis's Native American heritage. An arrow-maker and his daughter sit on a round base. They are dressed in traditional Native American clothes and the male figure has recognizable Native American facial features. Lewis chose to "whitewash" the facial features of her female figures, removing all facial features associated with "colored" races.[56] Lewis pushed the limits with the accuracy of her sculptures. She wanted to be as realistic as possible.[50]
Death
For years, contesting theories held that Edmonia Lewis died in Rome in 1911 or, alternatively, that she had died in Marin County, California, and was buried in an unmarked grave in San Francisco.[51] Recent scholarship has found that she lived in the Hammersmith area of London, England, before her death on September 17, 1907, in the Hammersmith Borough Infirmary.[52] According to her death certificate, the cause of her death was chronic Bright's disease.[53] According to parish records she is buried in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery, in London
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