Mary Edmonia Lewis: The Pioneering Black American Sculptor - Biography Sample

Introduction

Mary Edmonia Lewis was born in the year 1844 to Robert Benjamin Lewis and Catherine Mike Lewis. She is a black American sculptor of mixed-African American descent. She was born and raised in Upstate, New York, until the death of her parents (Etinde-Crompton & Crompton, 2019). Orphaned at a young age, she moved to her mother's nomadic family, where they named her wildfire (Etinde-Crompton & Crompton, 2019). Mary's elder brother took the responsibility of educating her, and she enrolled at Albany and then joined Oberlin college in Ohio in 1859. Mary's stay at Ohio ended shortly after being assaulted by whites, which was sparked by her acquittal in a trial that she accused her of poisoning two of her white roommates (Etinde-Crompton & Crompton, 2019).

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Training

With the financial assistance provided by her brother, Lewis moved to Boston, where she received little training from a sculptor Edward Bracket. Meeting with Edward proved to be the turning point of her life as she became one of the most celebrated artists ever. In Boston, Lewis started sculpting portraits of abolitionists, including Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Philips. The quality of Edmonia’s art was high, enabling her to sell most of her sculptors together with one of the Boston hero and the leader of the regiment civil war John Brown. It, therefore, enabled Lewis to fiancé her trip to Europe in 1865.

Lewis traveled to several cities in Europe, including London and Paris, and later settled in Rome, where she rented a studio. The availability of fine white marble for sculpting was attractive and also ignited interest from other American artists such as Harriet Hosmer (Ríos & Mercader-Amigó. 2020). She settled in Rome to get her close to Italian stone carvers who were best known for transferring a sculptor’s design from a plaster model to a finished beautiful white marble (Ríos & Mercader-Amigó. 2020). The proximity to Italian stone cravers enabled her to improve her skills by learning from the Italians(Ríos & Mercader-Amigó. 2020). Lewis was impressed by the Italian city and knew that she would start to learn skills in the art that she thought was familiar in Rome.

Stone Cravers

Due to her limited financial ability, Lewis completed most of her work alone as she could not fund the services provided by stone cravers (Beetham, 2015). Edmonia regularly craved portraits for her supporters, who would pay her a small fee or thank them for supporting her art (Beetham, 2015). Her first sculptor in Rome was funded by Anna Waterson, who wrote a poem titled ‘Edmond Lewis”, describing her skills and talent (Beetham, 2015).

One of Edmonia’s most celebrated sculptors is the Old Arrow Maker, which illustrates a scene from a poem by Henry Wadsworth, where a young woman plaits mats of flags while her father makes arrowheads for Jasper (Beetham, 2015). It is a poem based on the Ojibwe culture, which is Mary’s native. She was motivated to do the artwork by the hope of reconciliation between the Ojibwe and the Dakota community (Beetham, 2015). The poem ends with intermarriages between the two tribes hoping that they forget their rivalries and heal wounds that result from fighting (Beetham, 2015).

Most Celebrated Sculptors

In 1876, Mary carved the sculptor of the Egyptian queen and named it ‘The Death of Cleopatra ’ (Etinde-Crompton & Crompton, 2019). It is the art of the queen who chose to commit suicide rather than submit to the Roman forces (Etinde-Crompton & Crompton, 2019). The sculptor shows the queen dying while on the throne after a poisonous snake bit her. It received different reactions where some praised the effort of the work, while others criticized her authenticity for carving the sculptor (Etinde-Crompton & Crompton, 2019). After its debut, mary’s sculptor ‘The Death of Cleopatra’ was believed to be lost but was later found in a saloon. In 1985, the sculptor was awarded to the Historical Society of Forest Park, which they then donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum where it currently lays.

Another sculptor by Edmonia Lewis is Moses, where she created artwork of Moses, who led the children of Israelites out of Egypt (Etinde-Crompton & Crompton, 2019). To be able to follow Moses' footsteps and be a pioneer woman in the art industry motivated her to continue her work. The work of Moses in Egypt enhanced her desire to be free from racial abuse she suffered while in college and the United States (Etinde-Crompton & Crompton, 2019). It is the freedom that she strived for that made her flee from the United States to Europe. The move to Rome was critical to the career of Lewis. She managed to survive through the hardship and mainly targeted the American tourists who visited Italy to purchase her sculptors (Etinde-Crompton & Crompton, 2019).

Like most of her childhood, the final years of the life of Edmonia Lewis is unknown. It is unclear whether she continued to live in Rome or moved back to the United States of America (Ríos & Mercader-Amigó. 2020). Lewis continued with her art in Rome until the 1890s where her last sculptor is traced. There is a belief that she died while in Rome, but that is in doubt after recent discoveries of her death documents found in London, England (Ríos & Mercader-Amigó. 2020). To this day, the memory of Edmonia Lewis is clear because of her artwork, and it will surely remain for a long period.

Conclusion

The majority of the life of Edmonia Lewis remains unclear, but her memory lives on because of the sculptors she carved and preserved in museums (Ríos & Mercader-Amigó. 2020). Her skills are an inspiration to many artists who would like to emulate her work. Her relentless hard work to carving sculptors without any formal training is admirable, and to consider that she was persistent in working in an era full of racism leaves so much to be desired. The quality of art produced by Lewis is unmatched, although most of her work remains incomplete due to financial constraints (Ríos & Mercader-Amigó. 2020). She is a great artist who set the bar for other sculptors to aim.

References

Beetham, S. (2015). A Sisterhood of Sculptors: American Artists in Nineteenth-Century Rome. Art Inquiries, 16(5), 680.
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/scul/hd_scul.html.

Etinde-Crompton, C., & Crompton, S. (2019). Edmonia Lewis: Internationally Renowned Sculptor. Enslow Publishing, LLC.
https://issuu.com/crosscan/docs/en-cat-s20-fl

Ríos, A., & Mercader-Amigó, L. (2020). En Casa del Fotografo: Photographic Performances of the Sculptors Harriet Hosmer, Edmonia Lewis and Vinnie Ream / At the Photographer's House: Photographic Performances of the Sculptresses Harriet Hosmer, Edmonia Lewis and Vinnie Ream. Art, Individual and Society, 32 (1), 59-79. (Ríos & Mercader-Amigó. 2020)
https://hyperallergic.com/434881/edmonia-lewis-grave/.