EDMONIA LEWIS
(c.1845-c.1911)
Artist: Sculptor
Edmonia Lewis is recognized as the first major African
American sculptor and the first African American artist
to achieve an international reputation. Largely self-taught,
she had some limited instruction in sculpture when
she lived in Boston from 1863 to 1865. In Boston she
earned money for her life-transforming voyage to Europe
by making portrait busts of local abolitionists. She
also sold medallions of John Brown, $15 reproductions
of her bust of the martyred Colonel Robert Gould Shaw,
and photographs of her sculptures. She advertised
her sculpture in The Liberator. Impressed
by her youth and talent, journalists wrote articles
about Lewis in such publications as The Broken
Fetter, the Freedman's Record
and the New York Tribune. At twenty Lewis
crossed the Atlantic Ocean and journeyed through Paris
and Florence to her life-long home in Rome. There
she became loosely affiliated with a group of American
expatriate white women sculptors who, like Lewis,
worked in the neoclassical style. Lewis' work
often portrayed African American and Native American
themes, as well as ancient Roman and religious subjects.
American and European tourists visited her studio;
art critics interviewed her and reviewed her work.
Lewis' career flourished from the late 1860s
into the 1880s.
Lewis returned frequently to the United States to
show and sell her sculpture with great entrepreneurial
resourcefulness and ingenuity. In 1870, she raffled
off her Hagar in Chicago for $6,000. She
placed promotional ads in local papers. She showed
her work in art galleries and at agricultural and
church fairs. She sometimes exhibited her art work
in a booth constructed like a wigwam. She mounted
money-raising campaigns so people could buy her art
work to honor notable figures or institutions. Utilizing
such boldly ingenious strategies in the United States,
Lewis succeeded in maintaining her life as an artist
in Europe.
Born in upstate New York to an African American father
and an Afro-Chippewa mother, Edmonia Lewis drew inspiration
from her bicultural heritage. Aided by her older brother,
she was educated at New York Central College in McGrawville
and Oberlin College. At Oberlin Lewis was falsely
accused of poisoning two classmates and suffered a
severe mob beating. Unable to complete her studies
at Oberlin, Lewis came to Boston to pursue her artistic
career. When interest in neoclassical sculpture declined
in the 1880s, information about Lewis and her work
disappeared from public notice. Where and when she
died is unknown.
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