The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis (55 page)

NOTES FOR 5. INDIAN THEMES

[180]
The eighteenth-century notion of the “noble savage” – a naturally good person who was content until corrupted by civilization – had found its way into popular culture.

[181]
Child to Harriet Sewall, July 10, 1868, Child MSS 69/1841. Pocahontas (ca. 1595–1617) was a Native American woman who married an English colonist after colonists captured her.

[182]
William H. Gerdts, “The Marble Savage,”
Art in America
62 (1974): 64-70; Cynthia D. Nickerson, “Artistic Interpretations of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha,”
American Art Journal
16 (1984): 49-77; Joe Lockard, “The Universal Hiawatha,”
American Indian Quarterly
24 (2000): 110-125. By 1857, fifty thousand copies of
The Song of Hiawatha
were in print. By 1862, translations had appeared in German, Danish, French, Polish, Dutch, and Latin.

[183]
For example, Joseph Mozier carved seminudes
Pocahontas
(1848) and
The Indian Maiden's Lament
(1859). His
Wept of Wish-ton-Wish
(1859) [after James Fenimore Cooper’s 1829 historical novel] portrayed a fully clothed white woman who lived with the Narragansett.

[184]
Wreford, “Lady Artists in Rome;” BDET, May 24, 1866; NYDG, July 10, 1873, quote
d
Edmonia, “While it was in clay I had an order for a copy in marble by Mrs. Mary Pell, of Flushing, Long Island. I received $400 for the group. Then I modeled the ‘Old Arrowmaker and his Daughter.’”
Buick,
Child of the Fire,
124-125, notes subtle differences between some copies of this work; Michael W. Panhorst, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Collection Spotlight, Hiawatha’s Marriage, accessed Aug. 21, 2012, http://mmfa.org/uploadedFiles/Collections/Collection_Spotlight/LewisHiawathaMarriage_web.pdf, compares the copy acquired by the Montgomery (AL) museum with five other copies.

[185]
Wreford, “Lady Artists in Rome,” (calls it the “Wooing …”); BDET, May 24, 1866 (describes the “Old Arrow-maker”); Carleton, Mar. 1867 (refers to “the wooing and the marriage”). Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis,” offers a variant, perhaps confused, description: “‘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.” See also Smithsonian American Art Museum. Old Arrow Maker (Alternate) – 2, accessed Nov. 1, 2009, http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/lewis/newarrow1.html.

[186] note eliminated

[187]
Carleton, Mar. 1867 [dateline Jan. 5]:

I have heard several gentlemen say that there is not anything in Rome, of modern art, surpassing them for beauty of design, or excellence of execution in bringing out the peculiarities of Indian character. I am not a connoisseur in art and I give the opinions of others, among whom is a gentleman from Washington who is so well pleased with them that he will give the artist a commission for the two groups. A copy of the ‘Marriage of Hiawatha’ has already gone to New York.

[188]
Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis.”

[189]
SFEl, Sept. 6, 1873.

[190]
Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907),
Hiawatha’s Marriage,
1874, white marble, 32.25 x 15 x 10.5 inches, Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas, 2009.3.1.

[191]
Buick,
Child of the Fire,
238 n96. Correction: The image shown in the Bearden and Henderson,
A History,
70, is likely the same copy shown here and should have been credited to the National Museum of American Art.

NOTES FOR 6. A NEW PATRON, AN OLD FEAR

[192]
Helen Hunt Jackson, 1869, quoted in Ruth Odell,
Helen Hunt Jackson (H. H.)
(New York: Appleton, 1939), 98: “The comic little creature’s ability as a sculptor … could not atone for her servile flattery, which was most distressing.” She described Edmonia, 115, “[as] her devoted slave.” See also Helen Hunt Jackson to friends, Jan. 11, 1869, quoted in Kate Phillips,
Helen Hunt Jackson, A Literary Life
(Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003), 178: “I think she [Edmonia] can’t possibly help believing that my smile & shake of the hand mean a great deal more than they do—& I feel as if it were not honest to let her suppose I shouldn’t just the least bit in the world mind breakfasting with her!”

[193]
Cushman to Peabody, July 23, 1869, Massachusetts Historical Society Library.

NOTES FOR 7. MEET THE PRESS

[194]
For example, Phillips Brooks, Mar. 24, 1866, in
Letters of Travel
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1893), 99-101; Urbino,
American Woman,
229.

[195]
Taft,
History,
8.

[196]
Henry Wreford, who lived in Italy, wrote for the
Athenæum
and the
Times,
both published in London, England.

[197]
For example, Tuckerman,
Book,
603-604; Peabody, ChReg
(
1869), quoted in Hanaford,
Women of the Century,
264-266;
Appletons' Annual Cyclopædia,
s.v. “Lewis, Edmonia,” etc.

[198]
Wreford’s article also covered sculptors Harriet Hosmer, Mrs. James Freeman, Florence Freeman, Margaret Foley, Emma Stebbins, Isabel Cholmeley, and a number of female painters.

[199]
BDET, May 24, 1866.

[200]
ChRec, Mar. 31, 1866.

[201]
LCN, “A Colored Artist,” Mar. 28, 1866.

[202]
LCN, “Miss Edmonia Lewis,” Apr. 4, 1866.

[203]
Blodgett, “John Mercer Langston.” W. E. Bigglestone, Oberlin College archivist, Sept. 1981 visit, advised that fire destroyed records, 1846-1866.

[204]
Oberlin College,
General Catalogue 1833-1908
(1909), 591, 752. Cf. Rush University Medical Center, Archives, David Jones Peck, accessed Oct. 22, 2009, http://www.lib.rush.edu/archives/DJP_pathfinders.html.

[205]
Fletcher,
History,
II, 533.

[206]
Langston,
Virginia Plantation,
171-180. Langston shielded Edmonia’s name, speaking of her only as “the first artist of the negro race…. Her works of art as displayed in marble, tell how wisely and well her attorney labored in her case to vindicate justice and innocence!” The Oberlin News omitted any reference to the case in its obituary of Langston.

[207]
Frederick Douglass, editorial, “Miss Edmonia Lewis.”

NOTES FOR 8. HER FIRST EMANCIPATION STATUE

[208]
Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(1852) was an immediate bestseller
.

[209]
BDET, May 24, 1866.

[210]
Freedmen’s Record,
“Photographs,” Apr. 1866.

[211]
Wreford, “A Negro Sculptress.”

[212]
Edmonia Lewis, quoted in Child, letter to the editor,
New York (NY) Independent,
Apr. 5, 1866.

NOTES FOR 9. THE WATERSTONS

[213]
Josiah Quincy III was elected judge, congressman, state senator, mayor of Boston, and president of Harvard University. His son, Josiah, also served as Boston’s mayor. Cousin John Quincy Adams was sixth president of the United States.

[214]
William Cullen Bryant, letter to the editor, NYT, Aug. 27, 1858.

[215]
Anna C. L. Q. Waterston,
Adelaide Phillips, A Record.
2nd ed. ([Boston:] Cupples, Upham & Co., 1883).

[216]
BDET, May 24, 1866.

[217]
Carleton, Mar. 1867. The bust resembles an 1856 crayon portrait by Alonzo Hartwell, Helen Ruthven Waterston, Massachusetts Historical Society. See also Rev. Jones Very, “On Seeing the Portrait of Helen Ruthven Waterston,” in
Poems and Essays
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1886), 473.

[218]
NYT, May 17, 1873, “she explains to you that the small statues and heads are for people of slender purses, for ‘you know we must sell our work if we want to live;’” H. L. Robbins to Cushman (approx. 1867), Papers of Charlotte Cushman, Letters vol. 12, no. 3654, Library of Congress, who speaks of “her little marble heads.”

[219]
Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717.

[220]
Ibid.

[221]
Freedmen’s Record,
“Edmonia Lewis,” Jan. 1867.

[222]
For example, R. D. Dove, “Centennial Exhibition,” ChRec, Oct. 12, 1876, would decry realism ten years later as he criticized a European’s visualization of a freed slave:

He seems to have taken a very low type of the race, a very poor specimen as a model, and to have copied it clearly. It could not well be more realistic. So true is it to nature, that it seems a great bronze photograph, if that were a possibility, and causes one to regret that it is formed of such enduring material…. The genius of the Austrian [sculptor], as he was not fortunate enough to obtain a fine model, should have supplied the deficiencies, and for the illustration and commemoration of as great an event as the ‘Abolition of Slavery in the U.S.’ The subject should have been endowed with beauty of form, grandeur of action and an ideal development approaching the heroic.

[223]
Murray,
Emancipation,
20-23, quoted Clark,
Great American Sculptures,
142, who likely had access to Tuckerman,
Book,
603-604, and Wreford’s 1866
Athenæum
interview.

NOTES FOR 10. WILLIAM WETMORE STORY

[224]
NYT, May 17, 1873.

[225]
Jarves,
The Art Idea,
281-282. The Libyan Sibyl was the most powerful prophet in Greek mythology.

[226]
Moritz Hartman, quoted in Mary E. Phillips,
Reminiscences of William Wetmore Story
(Chicago, New York: Rand McNally, 1897), 134.

[227]
Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl,” AtM, Apr. 1863, 473-481. Cf. Nell Irvin Painter,
Sojourner Truth. A Life, A Symbol
(New York: Norton, 1993), 151-163. Stowe, Tuckerman,
Book,
577, and others quoted the
Athenæum:
“The Sibilla Libica has crossed her knees—an action universally held among the ancients as indicative of reticence or secrecy, and of power to bind. A secret-keeping dame she is, in the full-bloom proportions of ripe womanhood.”

[228]
Story to C. E. Norton, Aug. 15, 1861, in James,
William Wetmore Story,
II, 60-72.

[229]
Painter,
Sojourner Truth,
139.

[230]
William Wetmore Story,
Proportions of the Human Figure
(London: Chapman and Hall, 1864), 11.

[231]
Whitney to Home, June 23, 1867, Payne MSS, 658.

[232]
Story to J. R. Lowell, Dec. 10, 1864, in James,
William Wetmore Story,
II, 147-151.

[233]
Story to C. E. Norton, 1863 or 1864, James,
William Wetmore Story,
II, 127.

[234]
Whitney to Home, Feb. 7, 1869, Payne MSS, 758-761.

[235]
Story to J. R. Lowell, Feb. 11, 1853, in James,
William Wetmore Story,
I, 253-264.

[236]
James,
William Wetmore Story,
I, 257-258.

[237]
William Wetmore Story,
Roba di Roma
(1864), II, 53-87, 94, 95, 176. Cf.
Murray’s Handbook
(1867), xxxvi, the Rome census, 1866, counted 4567 Jews “still compelled to live in the Ghetto or Jews’ quarter – a barbarous system.” Not counting foreigners, the population of Rome was 210,701 including 437 resident Protestants and 434 residents of jail. See also Urbino,
American Woman,
225-227, who was horrified by the oppression of the Jews in Rome. A papal order of 1555, which condemned Jews to cruel rules, ended after 1870 and the installation of a secular government in Rome.

[238]
James,
William Wetmore Story,
I, 63-64.

[239]
Charles Sumner to Story, Jan. 1, 1864, in James,
William Wetmore Story,
II, 158.