Figure 17. Via di San Nicola da Tolentino art district
Taken from a map published by the man who owned much of the Gardens of Sallust, this detail shows the Via di San Nicola da Tolentino (running northeasterly from the Piazza Barberini up to the Via di Santa Susanna) before the area was overtaken by development. The Vicolo crosses the Via at a right angle, connecting it with Via San Basilio and more art studios. The rail terminal lies off the map to the east. Note the “Palazzo Barberini” and the Hotel “Locanda Costanzi,” across from the “S. Nicola” church. This map is also online at http://www.edmonialewis.com/san_nicola_art_district.htm.
15. PARIS 1867 AND MORE
L’Exposition Universelle
Meanwhile, Emperor Napoleon III aimed to outdo the English expo of 1862 with a new world’s fair. French entries were soon followed by a flood from England, Italy, Germany, etc. For American artists in Rome who were disappointed with their government’s refusal to ship their marbles, national pride was just another patronage. Five years earlier, William Story achieved fame while letting the Pope pay his freight to London. Rumor had it he and other sculptors planned to enter under the Roman flag again. In the end, they quietly opted out. Hosmer proclaimed her patriotism by sending her Sleeping Faun to the U. S. section at her own cost. Only Margaret Foley, who sent some clever medallions, appeared in Paris as an American under the Roman flag.[287]
Edmonia went to Paris as a tourist. It was her best chance to evaluate other artists on neutral ground. In Rome, she avoided most men’s studios as they did hers. Here such limits did not apply.
By the time she finished scouting, she could coldly compare the samples on display with her own work. So many statues were larger than anything she had done. Flawless white marble dominated, with bronze in significant evidence. She saw subjects and poses far outside her experience. The most prestigious entries from Italy reflected its cultural focus on themes classical and symbolic, marks of a private education and upper class membership.
In his official review, journalist Frank Leslie emphasized the historic and classical.[288] He considered French artists, whose works outnumbered the others, more realistic. In the United States section, he singled out Hosmer’s entry for enthusiastic praise. Many of her colleagues had sent nothing.
More important for Edmonia, the rigors of style had started to fall away to fresh ideas from the New World. In particular, J. Q. A. Ward cast non-Caucasian men in bronze – a life-size Indian Hunter (a man and dog that now stalk New York’s Central Park) and The Freedman, (Figure 18) created in wartime 1863 to symbolize the end of slavery in America.
Ward was one American sculptor who had no problem with “Congo.” He carved a lone black man (often traced to a celebrated classical fragment, The Belvedere Torso,[289]) with no reference to Lincoln. His images could turn and burn in her mind. She might also have read the critical appreciations quoted in Tuckerman’s compilation published that year:
“Here is the simple figure of a semi-nude negro, sitting, it may be on the steps of the Capitol, a fugitive, resting his arms upon his knees, his head turned eagerly piercing into the distance for his ever-vigilant enemy, his hand grasping his broken manacles with an energy that bodes no good to his pursuers. A simple story, simple and most plainly told. There is no departure from the negro type. It shows the black man as he runs today. It is no abstraction, or bit of metaphysics that needs to be labeled or explained. It is a fact, not a fancy. He is all African. With a true and honest instinct, Mr. Ward has gone among the race, and from the best specimens, with wonderful patience and perseverance, has selected and combined, and from this race alone erected a noble figure—a form that might challenge the admiration of an ancient Greek. It is a mighty expression of stalwart manhood, which now, thanks to the courage and genius of the artist, stands forth for the first time to assert in the face of the world’s prejudices, that, with the best of them, he has at least an equal physical conformation.” And the author of the “Art Idea”[290]] says of this work: — “It is completely original in itself—a genuine inspiration of American history, noble in thought and lofty in sentiment. It symbolizes the African race in America, the birthday of a new people in the ranks of civilization; we have seen nothing in sculpture more soul-lifting or more comprehensively eloquent. It tells the whole sad tale of slavery and the bright story of emancipation. The negro is true to his type—of naturalistic fidelity of limbs; in form and strength suggesting the colossal, and yet of an ideal beauty, made divine by the divinity of art. It is to be regretted that the cost of this work in bronze must necessarily limit the number of copies, as it should be seen and possessed by the great mass of the people. Why cannot we have copies in clay-colored material? It would fill a great want in our available sculpture—something to educate the people, to point out the legitimate province of that dignified art, of which Mr. Ward is one of the most illustrious and honored disciples.”[291]
Figure 18. The Freedman, by J. Q. A. Ward, 1863
During the Civil War, Ward first displayed a plaster cast of his radical image at the New York Academy of Design. It generated considerable buzz in the Boston Transcript, the New York Times, etc. In 1867, he sent a bronze copy to Paris. Photo courtesy: Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of Alice Keys Hollister and Mary Eva Keys.
Back to Rome
Edmonia’s problem was no longer survival. It was ambition. Ward’s successes must have sharpened her hunger to join in. Returning to her new studio, she addressed her Emancipation task and unleashed edits that had fermented with Chapman’s critique and the sights of Paris.
She fired off a reply to Chapman, promising that she had embraced her comments.[292] Too excited to wait for the photo that showed her improvements, she prayed the print that followed would be effective. When it was ready, she sent it to Mrs. Chapman, Mrs. Child, the Freedmen’s Record, and possibly others.
Edmonia could have shriveled away if she had paused to wait, the long silence between letters sure to aggravate doubts. Humility and paranoia could tease: Wasn’t pity the basis of the London articles, of Tuckerman’s praise, of sales to tourists, and Cushman’s patronage? “Considering her antecedents” is one of the ways Mrs. Child put it.[293] Anne Whitney, who privately complained that a large, ignorant class of buyers misled the colored sculptor, considered it indulgence favoring her color.[294]
Then good news as cooler weather took hold. Presumably, some Bostonian advised her how the first of her commissioned busts had triumphed! Her Dioclesian Lewis (Figure 19) appeared at the A. A. Childs & Co. (not related to Lydia Maria Child) gallery on Tremont Street.
Unitarian Rev. John T. Sargent praised it in the Boston Transcript. The National Anti-Slavery Standard reprinted his remarks, noting he owned a copy of Edmonia’s Shaw,[295] but omitting that it was a gift of the artist.
In Philadelphia, the Christian Recorder reported, “it is not only an accurate likeness, but she has given the attitude and expression of the physical educator most happily.”[296]
Boston’s Commonwealth hailed her insights, concluding, “it is not the doctor of the platform but the doctor of social life, in a subdued and thoughtful moment and so the best rendering for friends and pupils.”[297]
Moved by such admiration, the owner showed the bust in New York.[298] There, the Herald of Health sang the praises of the natural likeness and the young sculptor.[299] Someone ordered a second copy in marble.
The excitement continued as the YMCA announced The Wooing was on its way.[300] Once again, Bostonians liked her work.
A colored newspaper in San Francisco later underscored the significance of the donation: “strong evidence of the capacity of our race for the higher branches of art, and a refutation of the slanders … of our natural inferiority.”[301]
In December, her Shaw bust graced an elaborate memorial service in Boston for the late governor John Albion Andrew alongside marble busts by Brackett, Powers, Sarah Clampitt Ames, and Thomas R. Gould.[302]
At some later date, the �
�Y” would extend its admiration with a copy of her Hiawatha bust.[303]
For Edmonia, the success must have recharged her optimism. Yet, still no word from Mrs. Chapman.
For Charlotte, Rome was wearing thin. She and Emma decided to take the next summer in America, where she hoped to reinvigorate herself. She must have felt old, for she added five years to her age on the ship’s passenger list.[304]
Figure 19. Dioclesian Lewis, 1868[305]
Modeled in Boston in 1865, the first marble copy was made in Rome and dated 1867. Photo courtesy: Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
Frank Leslie
Founded in 1855, the New York Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper was the sensational mass medium of its day – a weekly forerunner of the great tabloids and magazines of the twentieth century. Leslie could divine popular interest with the sense of a shark for fresh blood. During the Civil War, he satisfied curiosity about the battlefield with woodblock engravings. Later he portrayed the capture of Jeff Davis dressed as a southern belle in hoopskirt, sunbonnet and calico wrapper – a slander according to southern critics.
Hearing of Edmonia, he sniffed another scoop. The success of a colored sculptor was the kind of sensation that he knew sold papers. He went to her studio in Rome, a photographer in tow.
Edmonia mused at his outrage that some male artists had not done her the courtesy of a visit. The San Francisco Chronicle eventually reported her sardonic note on their rudeness: “But that didn’t trouble me much.”[306]
Beyond Charlotte, Hatty, and the sculptors of Florence, European artists, such as Shakspere Wood, an Englishman, Isabel Cholmeley, and the aging Italian professor, Adamo Tadolini,[307] befriended her. Tadolini had worked closely with Canova, the genius of neoclassical marble, even sharing a studio that is today part museum, part restaurant.
A year after the Paris expo and his visit to her studio in Rome, Leslie published a striking engraving of the young artist (Figure 20), surely based on a photo.[308] We believe it to be the earliest surviving portrait of our subject. The exposure of several minutes required by the crude technology could not capture a good smile, impulse, or other “Kodak moment.” Thus, the frozen pose fails to convey the charm that often captivated her interviewers as they took in the mixed race features that fascinated them.
Wreford had noted, “Whilst her youth and her colour claim our warmest sympathies, Miss Edmonia Lewis has a very engaging appearance and manners. Her eyes and the upper part of her face are fine; the crisp hair and thick lips, on the other hand, bespeak her negro paternity. Naïve in manner, happy and cheerful and all-unconscious of difficulty, because obeying a great impulse, she prattles like a child and with much simplicity and spirit pours forth all her aspirations.”[309] A year earlier, Tuckerman had offered a similar note: “In her coarse but appropriate attire, with her black hair loose … and with her large black sympathetic eyes brimful of unaffected enthusiasm.”[310]
Leslie’s also illustrated the romantic Wooing. By the time they appeared, three full years had elapsed since she left Boston. She needed to return to mend fences and to engage her new American fans. As the only “colored sculptor” and praised by critics, she was gathering interest.
Figure 20. “Edmonia Lewis, sculptor,” ca. 1867
16. RENEWAL OF THE SPIRIT
Music Lessons
At Oberlin, Edmonia learned the basics of music at no extra cost. In addition to hymn singing, concerts brought the secular music of Handel, Mendelssohn, and Rossini. Boston offered similar fare. In Rome, she enjoyed the opera. As popular entertainment, opera was as “common as oil and wine, and nearly as cheap.”[311]
Edmonia loved music so much she started lessons in Rome. As a hobby, her music endured in the shadow of her art. Surviving references are ambiguous, denying details even to the most diligent researchers.[312]
Women of the day often sang, played harps, lutes, and keyboard instruments of all sizes. The piano, invented in Italy, was the instrument of female choice in America. Edmonia was so tiny, her hand probably failed the octave and such basics of most full-size stringed instruments.
Her commercial rise let her enjoy other aspects of color-blind Roman life. By mid-1868, she flaunted her success in an open carriage, eye-catching and proud, riding through the crowds at the ancient Pincian gardens and villas that overlook the streets of Rome.
Mrs. Child, fretting about Edmonia’s lack of manners, was further horrified by word her music lessons.[313] She was certain Edmonia lived on charity and simply burned through every dollar she received. Having felt real poverty, she was the penny-conscious author of America’s first book on household management: The Frugal Housewife (1828).
Edmonia’s recreation was modest compared with most of the expat colony – elaborate dinners, servants, carriages, and stables of horses. Edmonia was not part of their social swirl and churn despite occasional invitations.
Liszt
It seems likely that Isabel and Hugh Cholmeley were responsible for Edmonia meeting Franz Liszt, virtuoso pianist and composer. Liszt was the musical fireball of the century. He was also notorious for his love affairs with titled, married, and rich women. In his adolescence, he had dreamed of becoming a priest. Retiring to a monastery in Rome, he wrote religious music, taught, and studied theology. He dressed in clerical robes but was not entitled to hear confessions or to say Mass.
Impressive in his tailored black cassock, Abbé Liszt welcomed Edmonia. His love for the Boston-made Chickering piano, with its patented cast-iron frame, could have been a topic of their conversation. Charles Chickering himself delivered one to Liszt in 1867 after it won a Légion d'Honneur in Paris. The piano-maker’s offices were quite near Edmonia’s first favorite statue.
Charlotte liked to say Liszt was “always acting.”[314] In her words, “It is sinister, the mouth when he smiles curves up like a half moon and he looks like a devil. When he sits down to the piano, his face instantly becomes divine.”
Even so, his harmonic adventures, pianistic flourishes, and intimidating fortissimos could thrill and mesmerize. In a chamber setting, where listeners sit an arm's length or two from performers, the ferocious percussion of his large hands on the Chickering must have been electrifying.
Edmonia modeled his profile for a marble bas-relief. Images of famous people were her stock in trade. A medallion would not offend her best friend, Isabel, who was so proud of her bust of him. Edmonia spoke of visiting Liszt and hearing him play when American reformer Frances E. Willard visited her in 1870. Willard admired the Liszt medallion along with her portraits of other Americans. [315]
Edmonia’s new circle of fashionable Catholic friends could provide a feeling of community and a spiritual home. While their gatherings were similar to Charlotte’s, she probably did not feel so much a conversation piece. She was a member, and she decided to return the welcome.
Isabel Cholmeley and Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, Liszt’s platonic companion, both offered to stand godmother at her adult baptism. Edmonia chose Isabel and took two sweet baptismal names – Maria Ignatia.[316]
17. ANNE WHITNEY’S DISDAIN – 1868
Coming Out
For years, Edmonia had protected her Catholic roots against a Protestant world intolerant of the Roman Church and its members. Her harmless deception must have hardened under the Yankee orthodoxy that prized snipes at the pope and his followers. It was not for some time that she openly traced her link to the Jesuits.[317]
In February, Anne Whitney revealed to her sister that Edmonia had joined the Church. With a sense of shock and betrayal, Anne rationalized that the turn was more practical than spiritual.[318] The local Protestant pastor was reputedly more interested in hunting foxes than in tending his flock. Because the Papal government did not allow ‘heretics’ to hold services in Rome, the nearest Protestant church endured outside its walls in an old granary near the hog market. The unattractive location was surrounded by filthy streets and harsh odors.
Anne also let her siste
r know that Edmonia was succeeding as a sculptor.[319] Yet, she remained coldly critical, considering Edmonia’s skills as crude as her turn of faith.
Professing decency, she wrote that she wished to help her, but Edmonia had rejected her advice. Thoughts of carving Catholic icons made Anne squirm as she bristled with superiority, calling them rude and wanting in elementary knowledge. In her view, Edmonia’s resistance to her advice stemmed from a fear of accusations that she let others create her work.
While they exchanged cordial visits occasionally, Anne’s envy mired her in denial of Edmonia’s advancing skills. To Anne, Edmonia preferred to blunder on in her own way.
No longer a beginner, Edmonia was not about to reveal her other mentors to Anne. She refined her craft with informal advice from Hatty Hosmer, Isabel Cholmeley, and the Tadolini tribe of notable sculptors.
Dolts
Rogers, Powers, and other artists in Italy often made fun quoting coarse visitors’ ignorant comments that bore out the biblical motto about pearls before swine. Rather than joke and sneer, Edmonia preferred to blow up. As a colored woman, telling tales about rich white folk could only draw trouble.
Anne, however, had no such limits. In a letter dated Apr. 3, 1868, she sniggled to her sister how a pair of Americans insulted Edmonia as they entered her studio. One wrote his name in the guest book. The other, seeing Edmonia’s dark skin, objected and refused to enter.
The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis Page 15
