MY FAVORITE ARTISTS: INTERPRETIVE CRITIQUE #3

In the third blog in a series on my favorite artists, I would like to explore the ground-breaking sculpture of 19th century American artist, Edmonia Lewis.  Very little is known about her life, particularly her later years.  During a time when it was extremely difficult for minority artists to be taken seriously, she shrewdly changed her life story depending on her audience to win over advocates for her work.  

Photo of Lewis, Henry Rocher, albumin silverprint, c. 1870, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Lewis, one of the first Black professional sculptors, was born in 1844 to a mixed race couple.  Her father, a Haitian, worked as a manservant and her mother, part Chippewa, sold Native American trinkets to the tourist market.  They named their daughter, Wildfire, quite apropos in light of her later career as a daring minority artist during the time of enslavement, Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era in the United States.  After her parents died when she was young, Lewis lived with her aunts in New York state.  Her half-brother made some money during the gold rush in Idaho and Montana and used some of his new found wealth to finance his sister’s education.  

Lewis entered Oberlin College in 1859 and, three years later, endured stressful legal situations, most likely racially motivated.  She was accused of poisoning the wine of a pair of Oberlin students.  A white mob kidnapped and badly beat her, leaving her to die.  She was acquitted, but, soon after, was accused of stealing a frame, brushes and paint from the college.  The charges were dismissed, but administrators asked her to leave, without receiving a degree. 

Lewis traveled to Boston, where she met anti-slavery advocates, like William Lloyd Garrison.  Sculptor, Edward Brackett, mentored her and helped her establish her own studio.  Lewis sculpted plaster and clay portrait medallions in relief featuring well-known abolitionists, including Garrison, John Brown and Wendell Phillips, which she was able to successfully sell.  

In 1863, Lewis produced a bust of Robert Shaw, a Union colonel who led the African American 54th Infantry during the Civil War.  It was quite successful and she used the proceeds from the sale of copies to go to England and France, before settling in Rome in 1866.  While there, she was friends with another female American sculptor, Harroet Hosmer, who studied anatomy at the Missouri Medical College in St. Louis, and went on to become the most famous sculptress in  America.  They were part of what was dubbed by Henry James as “The White Marmorean Flock,” a group of expatriate American female sculptors in Italy, which also included Louise Lander, Anne Whitney, Emma Stebbins, Margaret Foley, Florence Freeman and Vinnie Ream.  Unlike typical male sculptors of the era, who were able to pay local stonemasons to create their designs in marble, Lewis, lacking the necessary funds, carved her own works.  As Lewis said, “I was practically driven to Rome in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.”

Old Arrow Maker & His Daughter, Edmonia Lewis, marble, modeled 1866, carved 1872, Smithsonian Museum of American Art

Old Arrow Maker and His Daughter depicts a seated Native American man and his daughter.  Their posture, slightly leaning forward, and wide eyes, convey a sense of something about to happen - they must be ready and alert.  They are taken from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, a poem which inspired several other works by Lewis.  The two indigenous people are portrayed sympathetically, as individuals without caricature, as was so common in many 19th century depictions of them.   

Forever Free (Morning of Liberty), Edmonia Lewis. marble, 1867, Howard University Gallery of Art

Forever Free (Morning of Liberty) shows a monumental Black man with a broken chain around his wrist by a kneeling woman looking upward with clasped hands, strangely reminiscent of an allegorical classical female figure.  The obvious symbolism of emancipation in the form of the broken chain is made visceral and dynamic through the evocation of movement, along with time frozen at the moment of freedom.  

Hagar, Edmonia Lewis. marble, 1875, Smithsonian Museum of American Art

Hagar depicts the Old Testament heroine in a graceful and grateful pose.  Lewis’s knack for evoking motion through facial expressions and poses is again evident here.  Although clearly part of the neoclassical movement in 19th century American sculpture, she manages to transcend the measured and exacting work of artists such as Daniel Chester French, Hiram Powers and Horatio Greenough, to a realm of expectation and hope evoking the dreams of enslaved people in the United States.  The energy apparent in her work foreshadows the dynamism of later sculptors, such as Camille Claudel.

Death of Cleopatra, Edmonia Lewis, marble, carved 1876, Smithsonian Museum of American Art

Death of Cleopatra took four years for Lewis to complete.  Considered her masterpiece, she shipped it to Philadelphia in 1876 so the Centennial Exhibition art selection committee could review it for potential inclusion in its art exhibit.  The committee selected it for placement in Memorial Hall’s Gallery K for American artists.  It garnered a mixed reception - critics thought it exhibited great skill, but were taken aback by its graphic nature.  Lewis shows the moment Cleopatra chooses to end her existence, thus self-determining the way in which she will be remembered. Over time, the sculpture ended up in a Chicago tavern and at the Harlem Race Track there.  The Forest Park (IL) Historical Society donated it to the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in the 1990s, where it was conserved.

Lewis created portrait busts of renowned American historical figures, including Abraham Lincoln and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  In 1877, Ulysses S. Grant commissioned her to sculpt his portrait, which he sat for and which was positively received by him.  Lewis completed a portrait bust of the abolitionist politician, Charles Sumner, in 1895 for the Atlanta Exposition.  From 1896-1901, she lived in Paris and London.  Lewis died of chronic kidney failure in 1907 in London’s Hammersmith Borough Infirmary and is buried in St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery there.

Lewis is an innovator in so many ways. She achieved artistic recognition and success in a white world where racism limited her opportunities.  She overcame accusations that were most likely false to gain an education and training on two continents.  She subtly evoked themes in her work of breaking limitations through hope and determination.  For these reasons, she will be remembered not only as a pioneer minority artist, but also as a truly important individual who overcame white privilege to find herself through her art.