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Authors: Harry Henderson

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The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis (2 page)

BOOK: The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis
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For Harry Henderson, 1914-2003, and myself, Albert Henderson, Milford, CT., 2012

LIST OF CHAPTERS / CONTENTS

DEDICATION AND INTRODUCTION

LIST OF FIGURES

PROLOGUE

BEYOND PRAYERS

REDEMPTION

SANCTUARY

VENIAL SINS AND FAMILY SECRETS

SOJOURNING

FIRST COMMUNION

Book One - Boston

1. EAST IN 1863

2. EPIPHANY

3. MR. BRACKETT

4. EDMONIA’S BROTHER

5. STUDYING ART

6. THE WOMEN OF BOSTON

7. THE BLACK SUBJECTS OF JOHN ROGERS AND ANNE WHITNEY

8. A PRELUDE TO GLORY

9. A SUMMER DEATH

10. THE TREMONT TEMPLE INTERVIEW – 1864

11. MRS. CHILD

12. EDMONIA REVEALED

13. ANIMUS AND ANIMA

14. CRISIS 1864 TO 1865

15. THE MORNING OF LIBERTY

16. EXIT BOSTON

BOOK TWO – The World

1. STOPPING IN FLORENCE, 1865

2. ROME – 1866

3. CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN

4. STUDIO VISITORS

5. INDIAN THEMES

6. A NEW PATRON, AN OLD FEAR

7. MEET THE PRESS

8. HER FIRST EMANCIPATION STATUE

9. THE WATERSTONS

10. WILLIAM WETMORE STORY

11. A SECOND EMANCIPATION GROUP – 1866 TO 1867

12. GROWING SUCCESS

13. CUSHMAN AND THE OLD ARROW MAKER

14. THE GARDENS OF SALLUST

15. PARIS 1867 AND MORE

16. RENEWAL OF THE SPIRIT

17. ANNE WHITNEY’S DISDAIN – 1868

18. FOREVER FREE

19. HAGAR

20. TIMES DARK, OUTLOOK LONESOME – 1868 TO 1869

21. CELEBRITY LOST AND FOUND

22. BUTE

23. BACK IN THE USA

24. VINNIE REAM

BOOK TWO, Part Two – The Artist Becomes the Symbol

25. 1870 AND CHICAGO

26. STANDING OVATIONS – 1871 TO 1872

27. 1872 – WHY CLEOPATRA?

28. BUSINESS – 1872 TO 1873

29. MEDIA – 1873

30. TRAVEL CROSS-CONTINENT

31. NEW YORK RECEPTION – 1874

32. PRODUCING
THE DEATH OF CLEOPATRA
– 1872 TO 1875

33. PHILADELPHIA, 1876

34. THE DEPARTURE OF EDMONIA LEWIS – 1877 TO 1878

EPILOGUE – Post Scripts and Traces

1. ISHKOODAH’ AND EDMONIA

2. ROME AND LA DOLCE VITA

3. SPITE

4. AFTER 1878

5. THE GAMBLER, HIS HORSE, & THE FIREMAN

6. THE HAITIAN CONNECTION

APPENDIX: WORKS

KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTES

NOTES - continued

 

 

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.
Urania,
1862

Figure 2.
Benjamin Franklin,
by Richard S. Greenough

Figure 3.
Portrait of a Gentleman,
1871

Figure 4.
Col. Robert Gould Shaw,
1864. Plaster

Figure 5. Robert Gould Shaw in uniform, May, 1863

Figure 6.
Maria Weston Chapman,
1865

Figure 7. Maria Weston Chapman

Figure 8. Edmonia’s passport application, 1865

Figure 9.
Hiawatha’s Marriage,
modeled 1866

Figure 10.
The Old Arrow Maker,
modeled 1866, carved 1872.

Figure 11. Abolitionist symbol

Figure 12.
Helen Ruthven Waterston,
1866

Figure 13. Sojourner Truth

Figure 14.
The Libyan Sibyl,
by William Wetmore Story

Figure 15. William
Wetmore
Story, ca. 1870

Figure 16. Via Margutta art district, including the Spanish Steps

Figure 17. Via di San Nicola da Tolentino art district

Figure 18.
The Freedman,
by J. Q. A. Ward, 1863

Figure 19.
Dioclesian Lewis,
1868

Figure 20. “Edmonia Lewis, sculptor,” ca. 1867

Figure 21.
Minnehaha,
1868

Figure 22.
Hiawatha,
1868

Figure 23.
Forever Free,
1867

Figure 24.
Indians in Battle,
1868

Figure 25.
The Rape of the Sabine Women,
by Giambologna, 1582

Figure 26.
Hagar,
this copy 1875

Figure 27.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
marble

Figure 28.
Longfellow,
plaster

Figure 29.
Hygeia,
ca 1872

Figure 30.
Vinnie Ream.
Oil, by G. P. A. Healy, 1870

Figure 31. Advertisement,
Chicago Tribune,
1870

Figure 32.
Edmonia Lewis,
by Henry Rocher, 1870

Figure 33.
Asleep,
1872

Figure 34.
Poor Cupid,
carved 1876

Figure 35.
Cleopatra,
by William Wetmore Story, 1860, this copy carved 1865

Figure 36.
Young Octavian,
ca. 1873

Figure 37.
James Peck Thomas,
1874

Figure 38. Portrait of a Woman with a rose in her hair, 1873

Figure 39.
Abraham Lincoln,
1871

Figure 40.
The Sleeping Faun,
by Harriet Hosmer, 1865

Figure 41.
Moses
(after Michelangelo), 1875

Figure 42.
The Death of Cleopatra,
1876

Figure 43. Advertisement,
Chicago Tribune,
1878

Figure 44.
John Brown.
Plaster, painted terra cotta, 1876

Figure 45.
Senator Charles Sumner.
Plaster, painted terra cotta, 1876

Figure 46.
Bishop Benjamin W. Arnett.
Plaster, painted terra cotta, 1876

Figure 47. Autograph souvenir of Edmonia Lewis, front and back

Figure 48. The “Veiled”
Bride of Spring,
1879

Figure 49. The “Veiled”
Bride of Spring,
detail

Figure 50. African-American clergyman, 1879

Figure 51. Official death record, London, 17th Sept., 1907.

Figure 52. Bust of a Woman with plaited hair, 1867

Figure 53.
Landing of Columbus

Figure 54.
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
ca. 1873

Figure 55. Harry Henderson (left) and Romare Bearden

 

 

PROLOGUE

“Never yet could I find that a black has uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw an elementary trait of painting or sculpture.” – Thomas Jefferson,
Notes on the State of Virginia,
1787.

 

Beyond Prayers

Think of Edmonia Lewis as an artist at war. As her heroes took to the gun, the pen, or the pulpit to attack the cruel social order of the 1800s, she weighed in with artistic gifts and tools meant for clay, plaster, and marble. In the grand struggle for respect, she was a regiment of one.

With every image she created, every appearance she made, and every interview she gave the press, she undermined the lies of white advantage in a cool counterpoint to the rage of Civil War and Reconstruction. Physically tiny and personally charming, she taunted the demons of bigotry as she carved her heritage and appeared with her work alongside the best artists of the day. The news media spread her message far beyond those who actually saw her or her work.

To her enemies, she confirmed the rise of “inferiors” and a threat to white manliness. She was a woman and colored
[5]
– of mixed blood, in fact, as her mother was an American Indian and her father was of African descent. Clearly, there was more at issue than race. As a world-renowned sculptor with a studio in Rome comparable to the best, she raided a male profession – only recently disturbed by well-to-do white women. Behind their backs, a cowardly opposition called female artists amateurs, plagiarists, and potentially immoral. And then there were other issues such as class, which separated her from artists who had no need to earn a living, and the religion that placed her again with minorities in England and America.

News of her rise sent white supremacists and their foes spinning in opposite directions. It also upset all who tied well-established Greek-revival sculpture to hallowed ideals, to enduring public monuments, and to the heroes of the literary canon. Esteemed sculptors were supposed to be divinely gifted, ivy-educated white men – the learned poets of stone and princes of the literati. An appreciation of their work demonstrated breeding, refinement, and elegance.

Born outside the precincts of polite society, Lewis was none of the above. She found international fame (and notoriety) with the help of a few wealthy Englishmen, radical idealists energized by the Civil War, and a press invigorated by live steam power and newly laid rails of steel. Believers in natural rights thanked God for her timely entrance as young men gave up their lives to defend one side against the other. Political movements seeking a variety of equalities added to her support.

Whether or not she envisioned her potential place in history, she surely chose task after strategic task to take her there. She established a studio in Rome, Italy, then returned to America year after year.
[6]
Each time she returned, she was sure to suffer the sting of intolerance. She knew what harm could come to her. She had endured insults and a near-mortal beating. Inspired by martyrs, she fearlessly risked all to blaze a path in the arts as the nation grappled with the sudden liberation of four million slaves. Her yearly tour was especially demanding because she brought heavy statues and fragile plaster casts. She always arrived in the heat of summer and traveled for months, dealing with public accommodations mined with mean surprises. Then she returned to Rome on the rough seas of winter.

Why did she choose such a grueling calendar while other artists summered in the Alps or the British Isles? Her public reply was sardonic: “The summers in Italy are too much for me.”
[7]
A more candid truth emerged as she vented anger in 1876: “To do something for the race – something that will excite the admiration of the other races of the earth.”
[8]
To this end, her two greatest passions – her art and her craving for equality – merged and set her course.

 

Redemption

Racial equality was the holy grail of Reconstruction. It extended the anti-slavery thrust that sparked and defined the American Civil War. Many Members of Congress crusaded to secure rights for freed slaves. As long as they could, they assaulted remnants of slavery with reforms
[9]
enforced by federal troops. They met a growing resistance among northern voters unwilling to give up their ideas of racial advantage. In the South, they faced profound denials and the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan.

BOOK: The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis
12.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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