The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis

by Harry Henderson

  ***

  As if to balance the allegorical weight of Hagar, Edmonia returned to Genesis to carve Rebecca at the Well in 1871 and Rebekah in 1880.[459] The discovery of Isaac’s future bride is a favorite subject of artists. It is not about slavery, struggle, and suffering but about the promise of remarkable beauty. Her story, however, is not without misery. She conceived rivalrous sons and, like Abraham, took sides with the second son against the first.

  26. STANDING OVATIONS – 1871 to 1872

  A Syndicated Profile

  Ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 validated backers of racial equality in the voting booth. Not realizing how new Jim Crow laws and customs would undermine their goals, they rejoiced with gatherings, resolutions, and parades across the nation. For editors and publishers, the news sparked reports that shed light on their values. In the context of women’s claims on suffrage, feminist Laura Bullard offered an historic admiration of Edmonia on page eight of the Revolution magazine.[460] Although we use quotations from this popular source elsewhere in our text, we offer it here complete.

  Rome, Italy, Mar. 21, 1871. One of the first studios which we visited in Rome was that of Edmonia Lewis, the colored sculptor. We were interested in her even before we saw her; or any of her works; not only because of her sex; but of her race, and our acquaintance with her and her works has only heightened the interest which we felt in her.

  The world has advanced in the route of progress, but it has not yet reached that point to which we hope a few more centuries will bring it: when a woman can enter upon any vocation, whether literary, artistic, mercantile, or mechanical, with the same freedom as a man, and find no greater obstacles in the way of her success than her brother has to encounter.

  That equal start and fair chance in the race of life has not yet been given to woman. In her struggle to reach the goal of independence, she finds herself heavily weighed by her sex, and if, in addition to that burden, she has to bear also, like Edmonia Lewis, the prejudices felt against color and race, she needs a vast amount of enthusiasm and courage to venture into the field at all.

  That enthusiasm and that courage Edmonia Lewis had, and the result has justified her dauntless faith in the power of a strong will and untiring patience to conquer all difficulties.

  And if ever a woman had a rough path to tread in her road to success, that woman was Edmonia Lewis.

  She is of mingled Indian and African descent. Her mother was one of the Chippewa tribe, and her father a full-blooded African. Both her parents died young, leaving the orphan girl and her only brother to be brought up by the Indians. Here, as may well be imagined, her opportunities for education were meager enough. On her first visit to Boston she saw a statue of Benjamin Franklin. It filled her with amazement and delight. She did not know by what name to call “the stone image,” but she felt within her the stir of new powers.

  “I, too, can make a stone man,” she said to herself; and at once she went to visit Lloyd Garrison, and told him what she knew she could do, and asked him how she should set about doing it.

  Struck by her enthusiasm, Garrison gave her a note of introduction to Brackett, the Boston sculptor, and after a little talk with her, Mr. Brackett gave her a piece of clay and mould of a human foot, as a study. “Go home and make that,” said he, “if there is anything in you it will come out.”

  Alone in her own room, the young girl toiled over her clay, and when she had done her best, carried the result to her master. He looked at her model, broke it up and said, “Try again.”

  She did try again, modelled feet and hands, and at last undertook a medallion of the head of John Brown, which was pronounced excellent.

  The next essay was a bust of the young hero, Colonel Shaw, the first man who took the command of a colored regiment, and whose untimely and glorious death, and the epitaph spoken by the South, “Bury him with his niggers,” have made him an immortal name in the history of our civil war.

  The family of this young hero heard of the bust which the colored girl was making as a labor of love, they came to see it and were delighted with the portrait which she had taken from a few poor photographs.

  Of this bust she sold one hundred copies and with that money she set out for Europe, full of hope and courage.

  “I thought I knew everything when I came to Rome,” she said naively, “but I soon found that I had everything to learn.”

  At once she devoted herself to hard study and hard work, and here she made her first statue: a figure of Hagar in her despair. It is a work full of feeling, for as she says, “I have a strong sympathy for all women who have struggled and suffered. For this reason the Virgin Mary is very dear to me.” The first copy[461] was purchased by a gentleman from Chicago. A fine group of the Madonna with the infant Christ in her arms, and two adoring angels at her feet, attests to the sincerity of her admiration for the Jewish maiden.

  This last group has been purchased by the young Marquis of Bute, Disraeli’s Lothair, for an altar piece.

  Among Miss Lewis’ other works are two small groups, illustrating Longfellow’s poem of Hiawatha. Her first, “Hiawatha’s wooing,” represents Minnehaha seated making a pair of moccasins and Hiawatha by her side with a world of love and longing in his eyes.[462]

  In the “Marriage” they stand side by side with clasped hands. In both the Indian type of feature in carefully preserved and every detail of dress, &c. is true to nature: the sentiment is equal to the execution. They are charming bits, poetic, simple, and natural; and no happier illustrations of Longfellow’s most original poem were ever made than these by the Indian sculptor.

  A fine bust, also, of this same poet is about to be put in marble, which has been ordered by Harvard College, and in this instance, at least, Harvard has done itself honor. If it will not yet open its doors to women who ask education at its hands, it will admit the work of a woman who has educated herself in her chosen department.

  Miss Lewis has a fine medallion portrait of Wendell Phillips, a charming group of sleeping babies, and some other minor works in her studio.

  She is just about finishing a commission which Dr. Harriet [sic, Harriot] K. Hunt, of Boston, has given her: a monument for her last resting place at Mount Auburn.

  We have not yet seen this, but are told that it was Dr. Hunt’s own design: a life size statue of Hygeia, with various bas-reliefs on the pedestal.

  Miss Lewis is one of the few sculptors whom no one charges with having assistance in her work. Everyone admits that, whether good or bad, her marbles are all her own.

  So determined is she to avoid all occasion for distraction, that she even “puts up” her clay; a work purely mechanical, and one of great drudgery, which scarcely any male sculptor does for himself. It is a very hard and very fatiguing process, for it consists in the piling up masses of wet clay into a vague outline of a human figure, out of which the sculptor brings into form and beauty.

  If Miss Lewis were not very strong she could not do this, and it seems to us an unnecessary expenditure of her physical powers.

  Edmonia is below the medium height, her complexion and features betray her African origin; her hair is more of the Indian type, black, straight, and abundant. She wears a red cap in her studio, which is very picturesque and effective; her face is a bright, intelligent, and expressive one. Her manners are child-like, simple, and most winning and pleasing. She has the proud spirit of her Indian ancestor and if she has more of the African in her personal appearance, she has more of the Indian in her character.

  She is one of the most interesting of our American women artists here and we are glad to know that she is fast winning fame and fortune. There is something in human nature, poor as it is, which makes everyone admire a brave and heroic spirit; and if people are not always ready to lend a helping hand to struggling genius, they are all eager to applaud when those struggles are crowned with success.

  The hour for applause has come to Edmonia Lewis. All honor to the brave little African girl who has ea
rned her own way to fame and independence.

  Mrs. Bullard’s enthusiasm was so strong she added Hiawatha’s Wedding to her private collection – by 1880, The Wooing as well.[463] The article, which introduced the favorite quote, “I, too, can make a stone man,” [464] soon turned up on the front page of the Washington (DC) New National Era, edited by Frederick Douglass.[465] Praising Edmonia as “the young and gifted artist,” he hailed progress: “Surely the world moves.” Also bowing to her success, the Atlanta Constitution – in the heart of Dixie – and other publishers excerpted and plagiarized Mrs. Bullard’s rare impression of the artist at work, including its quaint puzzling over biracial blood.

  Gold Medal

  Italy’s new status as a modern nation gave birth to national pride and the desire to parade its best before the world. At a national exposition held in Naples in 1872, King Victor Emmanuel II gave Edmonia a first prize for Asleep, a pair of napping babes (Figure 33).[466] She proudly accepted the gold medal she wore at receptions for years. She also won a certificate of excellence for a toddling Cupid in Love Caught in a Trap (cf. Figure 34).

  The Italian art world adored the pudgy tots, usually male and naked, that they called putti [Italian: boys]. Edmonia’s prize-winning touch made alchemy with marble. It turned the cold, inert stone into adorable baby fat, silkily expressing every sensuous ripple, finger, and toe. Indeed, confirmed by Italian judges and the sophisticated art committee of the Union League Club, her skills were entirely on a par with better-known sculptors of the day.

  Unswerved by such triumphs, she continued her political interest. Noted by a German magazine, the following winter she exhibited in Vienna at a show themed on slavery.[467] Regrettably, we have not come across any detail to indicate what she showed. This aside, her last ideal work directly connected with slavery appears to be Hagar.

  Figure 33. Asleep, 1872

  This gold medal winner at Naples demonstrated Edmonia’s technical mastery. Photo courtesy: San Jose Public Library.

  Figure 34. Poor Cupid, carved 1876

  This marble statue is probably much like Edmonia’s Cupid Caught, which won a certificate in 1872 at Naples. She sold it the next year in San Francisco. Photo courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Alfred T. Morris, Sr.

  27. 1872 – WHY CLEOPATRA?

  1776 to 1876

  America had buzzed for years about the ripening plum of national pride, the long-awaited Centennial. Everyone agreed it had to top every other jubilee ever held. Congress debated for over a year before choosing Philadelphia. The official commission finally met in 1872. Its official seal quoted an Old Testament phrase, the one inscribed on the Liberty Bell: “Proclaim Liberty throughout the land, unto all inhabitants thereof.”[468] Used as an exhortation by Sojourner Truth decades earlier, the choice had thrilled foes of slavery. Now Reconstruction aimed to put it into practice. Many southern legislatures passed laws to give colored people full and equal access to transit, trade and entertainment. Senator Sumner pressed a Federal Civil Rights Bill in Congress. By year’s end, the nation reelected president U. S. Grant in a landslide victory.

  In hindsight, we see Edmonia living in a social twilight in Rome, returning to America periodically to renew her spirit as she joined the fray. She must have dreamed of a sunny public showing in Philadelphia. The home of the phrase “all men are created equal” could not have been more appropriate for a celebration of Emancipation. There her statues could openly rival the greatest art of her generation in full view of critics, judges, and the public – colored and white.

  America was the place for a showdown. It was where the viral “imputation of incapacity” (as Tuckerman’s critic called it) poisoned talent, education, and opportunity. Art was her weapon. When she toured, the old anti-slavery crowd took heart. Colored people understood her gifts, took pride, and found new possibilities for themselves. An uncertain white mainstream, open to influence, also came. The Centennial promised to bring more viewers than any other show she could imagine.

  In the harsh light of day, she must have realized it would be her most challenging task. America was where the worst bigots railed and schemed against people of color. They would arrive at Philadelphia in packs and gangs, starving for signs of a break from intrusions on their way of life. How would they explain her celebrity, her entry, and her mastery of fine art?

  She would later shudder to find they were running the show.

  Happy dreams dissolved into an urgent need to create something large, new, and exceptional – a showpiece that would anchor her other entries. While most artists would send something already carved but for some reason not sold, she borrowed money for a block of stone large enough to express the growth of her ambition. She had gambled in the past and had done well – but not without pressing her limits.

  She must have turned over a host of ideas. What about a colossal memorial to one of her established heroes – Longfellow, Lincoln, Sumner, Brown, or Shaw? Why not Columbus, George Washington, or Ben Franklin – all safely in keeping with the American theme? Why not more prize-winning putti? Why not one of the native champions suggested by the Tuckerman book, or a new Hiawatha scene? Pocahontas, contemplated years before, could have been a distinct possibility. Why not the Holy Virgin, held so dear? Why not revisit Emancipation with a larger, more buoyant Forever Free or a fourth, more stunning “freed woman?”

  For reasons that seem obvious today, she must have scratched one after another. As Charlotte Cushman had pointed out, only a deprived minority and a few old reformers took interest in abolition anymore. The surviving soreness with Mrs. Child and her clique must have blocked further thoughts in that direction. Tuckerman’s writer had sneered at her most popular works, the Hiawatha groups. Most Protestants, the American majority, would recoil from a Madonna or any other Catholic icon. Putti were adorable and popular – too much so. They were not likely to command the attention of serious critics, all male, in America.

  She needed to move on. She needed a well-known literary subject that would stir the common man while causing a buzz among literate critics.

  Focus

  Just doors away from her studio, W. W. Story and his grand “museum” reigned over the district, drawing lookers and art buyers from all over the world. As the premier American artist in Rome, he cast a longer shadow than any other artist did. He held the attention of the celebrities, elegant and clever, that shared dinners and exchanged letters with him.

  Elevated in his own mind by family wealth, Brahmin breeding, and the company of famous writers, he considered himself more poet than stone carver. He rarely acknowledged his artist neighbors. He sneered at those who earned an honest living, certainly at all women sculptors save the effervescent Hosmer, whose social skills set her apart.

  Local artists (and many others) did not share his opinions. They saw nothing deep in his conception, nothing sharp about his eye, nothing special in his mastery of materials. Nothing, in fact, pleased them more than gossip about him rudely demanding that Hiram Powers, or was it Thomas Ball? – or both? – loan him a bust of Edward Everett for use as a model. Such loans were common courtesy among colleagues, to be had for the asking. Such lore of Story the boor hardened their estrangement. They considered him a snob.[469]

  In Boston as well, his standing faltered as people studied his large bronze Everett in the Public Garden. Letters in the Boston Evening Transcript offered nothing but ridicule. The Atlantic Monthly denounced the pose. The chagrined author, according to the New York Times, pushed his plaster model into a dark corner. Under constant fire, the bronze moved repeatedly, stored for a while in a wood yard and lately miles away in Dorchester.

  Rumor had it that Story would grace the Centennial with his African images, Cleopatra and the Libyan Sibyl. The American public would see these works for the first time. They had received word of his Cleopatra with excitement in 1862, when it appeared in London. Two copies soon came to America in the hands of private collectors. Neither went on public display
until 1882, when one appeared at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

  For the most part, Americans loved the marble Cleopatra long-distance. But was it Story’s statue they loved, or was it Hawthorne’s? Hawthorne was the cause of its glory; Hawthorne’s novel, The Marble Faun, the conduit. Before inventing his popular fiction with pen and ink, Hawthorne had witnessed Story’s work, unfinished, in clay.[470] By saluting Story in his preface, Hawthorne set the stage for Story’s entry in the London show with spellbinding praise in the chapters that followed. Admiring fans overlooked the line between fact and fiction (to this day!). Mesmerized, they came to the Story studio with Hawthorne’s book in hand to read aloud in fawning reverence to the relentless passages, quoted fully here to convey their sense of awe and hypnotic power.[471]

  He drew away the cloth that had served to keep the moisture of the clay model from being exhaled. The sitting figure of a woman was seen. She was draped from head to foot in a costume minutely and scrupulously studied from that of ancient Egypt, as revealed by the strange sculpture of that country, its coins, drawings, painted mummy-cases, and whatever other tokens have been dug out of its pyramids, graves, and catacombs. Even the stiff Egyptian head-dress was adhered to, but had been softened into a rich feminine adornment, without losing a particle of its truth. Difficulties that might well have seemed insurmountable had been courageously encountered and made flexible to purposes of grace and dignity; so that Cleopatra sat attired in a garb proper to her historic and queenly state, as a daughter of the Ptolomeys, and yet such as the beautiful woman would have put on as best adapted to heighten the magnificence of her charms, and kindle a tropic fire in the cold eyes of Octavius.