Edmonia Lewis
Mary Edmonia Lewis (* probably July 4, 1844 in Greenbush, Rensselaer County, New York; † September 17, 1907 in Hammersmith , London , England) was an American sculptor . She was the first African American sculptor to achieve fame and recognition in the international art world.
Life
Her father was of African descent from Haiti, her mother was half Native American (Mississauga Ojibwe Indian) and half African descent. Lewis' mother was known as an excellent weaver and artisan.
Around Lewis' ninth year, both parents died within a year. Lewis and her older brother Samuel then lived with their mother's sisters for the next three years. Lewis and her aunt sold Native American handicrafts to tourists and visitors to Niagara Falls, Toronto, and Buffalo. Samuel became a successful businessman and gold digger and financed his sister's education, first at New York Central College and, when she rebelled there, at Oberlin College near Cleveland .
At that time, Oberlin College was one of the first institutions for higher education that also accepted women and different ethnic groups as students and, as an institution as well as by teachers and students, acted as a dedicated champion of abolitionism . The decision in favor of the Oberlin changed Lewis' life decisively when she was relieved of the burdens of her origins and was able to start studying art there. Her style itself was rather conservative and eclectic , an academic art in the sense of neoclassicism and romanticism , but this did not detract from her commercial and personal success.
Career as a sculptor
After graduating from college in 1863, Lewis moved to Boston and studied with the well-known sculptor Edward Augustus Brackett. Under his guidance, she made her own sculpting tools and sold her first sculpture, a female hand, for $ 8. In 1864 she opened her studio to the public for the first exhibition of her works.
She was inspired by slavery opponents and civil war heroes, and she met Union Colonel Robert Gould Shaw , commander of a Northern African regiment from Massachusetts. Lewis was inspired by him to create a bust that impressed the Shaw family so much that they bought this homage.
Early works that proved popular were portraits in the form of medallions of anti-slavery opponents John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison . Lewis was also inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and especially by his epic poem The Song of Hiawatha .
In 1865 she went to Rome for further studies . On her passport from 1865 it says: “M. Edmonia Lewis is a black young woman who was given a trip to Italy because she had shown great talent as a sculptor. ”The established sculptor Hiram Powers gave Lewis space in his studio. She joined a circle of artists living abroad and created her own studio in the premises that once occupied the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova .
Lewis spent most of her career in Rome. She continued to work on her classical technique as well as on the content, allowing herself to be influenced by the ancient style and giving it new life. She went so far as to depict people in a tunic rather than in their everyday clothing.
She achieved high prices for her works. In 1873 the New Orleans Picayune wrote : "Edmonia has landed two $ 50,000 contracts." Her popularity made her studio a tourist attraction. Lewis' rise to fame was accompanied by numerous exhibitions, for example in Chicago in 1870 and in Rome in 1871.
One of the major successes of her career was attending the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. For this purpose she had brought in a marble portrait of Cleopatra weighing approx. 1300 kg in her agony, which JS Ingraham wrote was “the most remarkable piece” in the exhibition. The statue drew thousands of visitors, some of whom were shocked by the depiction of death. Then Cleopatra came to a warehouse and disappeared without a trace. 120 years later it was rediscovered in an auction at Sotheby’s and, after being reviewed, transferred to the Smithsonian Institution .
Lewis received confirmation of her reputation as an artist in 1877, when the former US President Ulysses S. Grant had her portray him and was delighted with the result. At the end of the 1880s, interest in classicism was lost and with it in Lewis' work. She continued to work in marble and more and more frequently on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church.
death
The place of her death had been speculated for years, until recent research found that she had last lived in Hammersmith near London and died there in hospital on September 17, 1907.
literature
- Kirsten Pai Buick: Child of the fire. Mary Edmonia Lewis and the problem of art history's Black and Indian subject . Duke University Press, Durham NC 2010, ISBN 978-0-8223-4247-2 (with detailed bibliography pp. 310–339, PDF of the bibliography )
- Rinna Evelyn Wolfe: Edmonia Lewis: Wildfire in Marble. Parsippany, New Jersey, 1998, ISBN 0-382-39714-2 .
- Naurice Franc Jr. Woods: Mary Edmonia Lewis. in: Insuperable obstacles: the impact of racism on the creative and personal development of four nineteenth century African American artists. Union Institute Graduate School, Cincinnati 1993, OCLC 781755736 (Philosophical dissertation Union Institute 1993 413 pages)
Web links
- Website about Edmonia Lewis
- Gallery and old press articles at negroartist.com
- Cleopatra: Lost & Found , online exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC
- Literature by and about Edmonia Lewis in the WorldCat bibliographic database
Notes and individual references
- ↑ according to the information in the application for a passport from 1865
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lewis, Edmonia |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lewis, Mary Edmonia (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American sculptress |
| DATE OF BIRTH | uncertain: July 4, 1844 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | unsure: Greenbush, Rensselaer County , New York |
| DATE OF DEATH | 17th September 1907 |
| Place of death | Hammersmith , London , England |