Edmonia Lewis: Life And Career

Mary Edmonia Lewis was an American sculptor who worked most of her career in Rome, Italy. Born in New York, Lewis was the first African-American woman to achieve international fame. He was also the first African-American to be recognized as a sculptor in the art world.

Many 19th and 20th century American artists enjoy popularity only in their own country. Edmonia Lewis was one of the few exceptions. Today we talk about his life and work, how he overcame the obstacles posed by society and, contrary to all probabilities, gained worldwide fame.

Edmonia Lewis: Childhood

Edmonia Lewis was born a free dark-skinned woman in 1844 in Greenbush, New York. He had a brother who got rich as an adult when he started gold mining.

Little Edmon was the daughter of a black male servant. Her mother, also a dark-skinned woman, was of Ojibwa and African descent. The Ojibwas are one of the largest indigenous peoples in North America, along with the Cherokee and Navajo.

Edmon lost his parents when he was ten years old. He later claimed that he was raised by the Ojibwa family near Niagara Falls.

Although Mary Edmonia Lewis had little basic education, she reached Oberlin College in Ohio with the support of her successful big brother. There he studied between 1860 and 1863, and he became a particularly talented artist.

At the time, there was an anti-slavery movement going on on the Oberlin campus. This had a major impact on Edmonia’s future career as an artist.

The price of success

Edmonia Lewis had to overcome numerous obstacles before she became a famous artist. He was wrongly accused of attempting to poison two of his white classmates at Oberlin College. A group of whites captured and beat him. Lewis recovered from the attack and fled to Boston after the charges against him were dropped.

In Boston, Lewis befriended William Lloyd Garrison, who opposes black slavery, and sculptor Edward A. Brackett, who taught Lewis to carve and helped him promote his own studio.

In the early 1860s, Lewis began to receive some awards for his work, thus leaving his mark on the art world. His clay and plaster pendants, depicting Garrison, John Brown, and other leaders of anti-slavery movements, opened the door a little to his commercial success.

In 1864, Lewis made a bust of Colonel Robert Shaw, a Civil War hero who died at the head of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Thanks to this work, Edmonia Lewis achieved remarkable commercial success for the first time.

Thanks to the proceeds from the sale of copies of the bust, he was able to move to Rome. The decision to leave Rome came from the fact that it was already the home of many American immigrants. Several women had also arrived in the city in search of new opportunities.

Edmonia Lewis and life in Rome

Lewis continued in Italy as an artist. The subjects of his work were mainly his African American cultural heritage and, secondarily, Catholicism, his religion.

One of his most acclaimed works was the sculpture Free Forever (1867), which depicted a black man and woman emerging from the oppression of slavery. Lewis also carved busts of American presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln, among others.

One example worth mentioning is his works of art related to his cultural heritage is The Arrow Maker (1866). This work was inspired by his Native American roots. The sculpture depicts a father teaching his little daughter how to make an arrow.

One of his most famous works was a picture of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra called The Death of Cleopatra. He received praise from critics when the work was exhibited at the Philadelphia World’s Fair in 1876 and in Chicago two years later. This two-ton sculpture never returned to Italy because Lewis could not afford the excessive costs of transportation. For this reason, he was forced to put the work of art in custody. Someone discovered it several decades after his death.

Recent years and heritage

Like Edmonia Lewis from her childhood, there is not much information about her last years of life. It is known that he exhibited his work until the late 1890s. It is also known that he was visited by Frederick Douglass during a visit to Rome, and that he never married or had any children. Not much is known about the last ten years of his life.

Some speculate that Edmonia Lewis spent her last years in Rome. But his recently discovered death certificates show that he died in London in 1907 when he was 63 years old.

Despite her skin color, Edmonia Lewis received praise for her works of art already in her lifetime. But it was only after his death that he received real recognition, when the art world finally surrendered to his magnificent works. In the late 20th century, Lewis ’life and art received praise posthumously, and his work has been exhibited in many places.

Some of his best-known works are now a permanent part of the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some of his work is also on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art and Howard University Art Gallery.