The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis

by Harry Henderson

  Encountering a simple nude “Venus,” one could simply avert one’s eyes. The imputed death rattle of a bare breasted corpse holding a writhing snake was unique. It produced shock. Speaking the unspeakable, it offered a visual jolt, mesmerizing and erotic to some, gratuitous and repulsive to others. Crowds thronged, according to a California visitor who felt herself “being in the presence of death.”[632]

  “Americans are a queer people,” Edmonia complained.[633] “Don’t you think a lady – a rich lady, too – came to me and said ‘Miss Lewis, that is a very beautiful statue, but don’t you think it would have been more proper to drape it? Clothing is necessary to Christian art.”

  She responded, “Madame, that is not modesty in you. That is worse than mock modesty. You see and think only of evil not intended. Your mind, Madame, is not as pure, I fear, as my statue.”

  A more curious tale concerned a country woman who strayed in and stood in admiring awe for a few minutes. Turning to Edmonia, she asked: “Did you make it from life?”

  “Well, no, not exactly, as Cleopatra lived thirty years before Christ,” Edmonia replied.

  “O? Is that so! Then I suppose you made it from a photograph!”[634]

  Oberlin Pride

  The burned bridges of Oberlin did not deter some of its people from following Edmonia’s rise as they would one of their own. One day, in a swarming sea of faces, it seems a grinning man with a broad-brimmed hat called out, Mary, Mary Lewis.

  Anyone calling her Mary had to be from the treacherous past. Consider her reaction. Her stomach surely knotted as she felt herself blush. He must know the shameful history of accusations and dismissal.

  His grin widened: Remember me, William Wright[635] from Oberlin!

  Mr. Wright, storekeeper. He was the father of her teasing classmate, AA Wright,[636] and a neighbor of the merchants who made so much trouble for her.

  Of course, she remembered him, AA, AA’s buddy, Fred Allen, and much more. She remembered Mrs. Dascomb, the Lady Principal who denied her final classes and graduation. She remembered the hearing. The buzzing. The smirking girls and snickering boys. The fierce brow of old Father Keep and motherly pats of his wife. Treachery followed by violence, merciless and undeserved. The elegant Langston fiercely defending her in court. The goads, the gaffes, and the gossips and eyeballs that rolled and avoided her furious stare. She had missed classes as she recovered from the blows of her night stalkers. Then more accusations – unfounded but deadly to her college degree.

  As she made her way to Boston and beyond, she must have feared gossip about the way she was cast out. Yes, she remembered.

  Here was Mr. Wright, grinning as if nothing had ever happened.

  By all recorded accounts, she never spoke of her trials at Oberlin. She must have put it all behind her lest it trouble her mind and stain her hard won reputation as a dedicated artist. Long before, she could have hoped for an apology, an expression of regret, some acknowledgement of the unfairness she suffered. But the leaders of the town and the college, with their purist theology, ingrown politics, and lofty self-images, were incapable of expressing remorse to a colored girl.

  By this time, AA was married and teaching. Mrs. Dascomb retired. Father and Mrs. Keep were dead. Rev. Finney also died, almost one hundred years old.

  Mr. Wright told AA about the encounter. AA, in turn, wrote to his wife summering in Saratoga Springs.[637] Everyone in Oberlin knew Edmonia was famous. The Oberlin Review, identifying her as “the renowned sculptor,” bragged, “Miss Lewis took her first lessons in art at Oberlin about 16 years ago.”[638] Never mind her mother who showed her how she made designs for souvenirs.

  The Judges

  Edmonia’s old Studio Building neighbor, Edward M. Bannister, entered an oil painting without noting his color. Under the Oaks won a bronze medal. When he arrived to claim it, he was ignored. He was as invisible to judges blinded by their beliefs as the humble anti-hero of Ralph Ellison’s famous novel.[639]

  AME Church Bishop Henry McNeal Turner recalled with bitterness, “I grant that one colored man had a painting in the art gallery, but it was not known that it was the work of a negro until it took a first premium and he came to get it and the surprise created a sensation. But the only position other than that, so far as I could learn, filled by a colored person was attending the toilet rooms and bringing water to scrub some of the floors at night.”[640]

  He continued, “The statue of Cleopatra, which Miss Edmonia Lewis, the celebrated colored sculptress had on exhibition there, was brought from Rome, in Italy, and she did not appear in the character of an American colored woman, Therefore, we can claim no credit for the recognition given her.”

  Only a magical explanation could be possible. Edmonia was the genie already out of the bottle. Internationally famous, she had proudly asserted her color in interviews and news items for years. Few knew a powerful commissioner had backed her entry.

  The Centennial considered painting competitive, but not sculpture. It awarded no prizes in sculpture, only forty-three certificates of artistic excellence.[641] Only six Americans received them. One went to Howard Roberts, whose crowd-magnet Première Pose depicted a young nude woman, seated modestly with legs crossed and arms half-concealing her face. Another went to Erastus Dow Palmer for his portrayal of a founding father.[642] And one to John Rogers for his plaster groups, a forest of which neighbored Edmonia’s smaller works in the Annex. Two other certificate-winners[643] can barely be identified today beyond their catalog descriptions. W. W. Story won for “the figure” as a representative of Italy as did Pietro Guarnerio and (remarkably) Michele Buoninsegna of Milan.

  That no Cleopatra received a certificate might have consoled her. Her Brown, Sumner, and Longfellow as well as the two Hiawatha groups met the judges’ request for American subjects. However, abolitionist themes frayed the tissue of North-South unity. With the U.S. Army chasing Native Americans on the frontier, her sympathetic portrayal of an arrow maker was a definite no-no. Longfellow may have suffered by association. Asleep and Cleopatra failed to address the basic standard. And, of course, the admission of Edmonia and her work had already trampled an unwritten rule.

  The Critics

  You will recall the Athenæum, published in London, England, created a sensation in 1866 when it announced the “Negro Sculptress” to the world. Not surprisingly, given the strong nationalisms of the time, the Athenæum critic found little to praise in the arts except the English exhibit and Edmonia Lewis. Signing his review only with initials, he opened with acid slaps at the U. S. section, calling it, “as bad and slovenly as can possibly be imagined.”[644] He went on, warming to his theme, “and the Catalogue is inaccurate, incomplete, and consequently worthless, while the quack-medicine advertisements on the reverse of every page or so make it resemble an almanac of that class.” He admired little as he trashed the show. Fortunately, he paused to celebrate our subject, emphasizing her Indian heritage:

  There are very few sculptures in the American section, and the only remarkable one is “The Death of Cleopatra.” She is reclining in a chair, is just expiring, and holds the asp in her right hand upon her lap. The other arm has fallen over the side of the chair. The face is slightly, but not unpleasantly, distorted by the agony of death. The pose of the figure is fine, and the statue is in some respects the best in the Exhibition. The sculptor is Edmonia Lewis, a young woman of Indian descent, who has studied at Rome.

  Also based in London, the Daily News heaped high praise, hoping the “quiet harmony” of her statue would “find its way in to our Royal Academy” as it predicted a “great future” for the artist.[645]

  Other critics noticed The Death of Cleopatra trampled stylistic ideals, although its marble glistened with the customary polish and its subject shimmered with literary reference. J. S. Ingram singled it out for exceptional praise. His note is distinctive in that it did not mention Edmonia’s race:

  The most remarkable piece of sculpture in the American section was perhaps
that in marble of The Death of Cleopatra by Edmonia Lewis, the sculptress and protégée of Charlotte Cushman. The great queen was seated in a chair, her head drooping over her left shoulder. The face of the figure was really fine in its naturalness and the gracefulness of the lines. The face was full of pain, and for some reason – perhaps to intensify the expression – the classic standard had been departed from, and the features were not even Egyptian in their outline, but of a decidedly Jewish cast. The human heads which ornamented the arms of the chair were obtrusive, and detracted from the dignity which the artist succeeded in gaining in the figure. A canopy of Oriental brightness in color had been placed over the statue.[646]

  Ingram’s coverage of the expo took no notice of anything by William Wetmore Story.

  The most qualified reviewer was the New York artist-writer William J. Clark, a friend of Saint-Gaudens. Edmonia would have to wait years to read his insightful comparison with Story’s queen. Clark not only bubbled but also drew distinctions she would have found particularly satisfying:

  An even more remarkable sculpture from the hand of a female artist than Miss Foley’s fountain which was in the Centennial Exhibition was the Cleopatra of Edmonia Lewis. This was not a beautiful work, but it was a very original and very striking one, and it deserves particular comment, as its ideal was so radically different from those adopted by Story and Gould in their statues of the Egyptian Queen. Story gave his Cleopatra Nubian features, and achieved an artistic if not a historical success by so doing. The Cleopatra of Gould suggests a Greek lineage. Miss Lewis, on the other hand, has followed the coins, medals, and other authentic records in giving her Cleopatra an aquiline nose and a prominent chin of the Roman type, for the Egyptian Queen appears to have had such features rather than such as would more positively suggest her Grecian descent. This Cleopatra, therefore, more nearly resembled the real heroine of history than either of the others, which, however, it should be remembered, laid no claims to being other than purely ideal works. Miss Lewis’ Cleopatra, like the figures sculptured by Story and Gould, is seated in a chair; the poison of the asp has done its work, and the Queen is dead. The effects of death are represented with such skill as to be absolutely repellant – and it is a question whether a statue of the ghastly characteristics of this one does not overstep the bounds of legitimate art. Apart from all questions of taste, however, the striking qualities of the work are undeniable, and it could only have been reproduced by a sculptor of very genuine endowments.[647]

  Acknowledging Edmonia’s heritage and reflecting that only vague references to her work had ever come to him, Clark went on to hail the work in no uncertain terms: “the real power of her Cleopatra was a revelation.”

  A signal that some Americans had come to their senses, Clark pointed out how Story’s Cleopatra benefited from Hawthorne’s best-selling novel.[648] Art critic and sculptor Laredo Taft later concurred, “it was the novelist who gave to the statue its reputation in England and America…. Into the work he read a vast deal more than ever the sculptor was to realize.”[649]

  Perhaps Clark meant to spark debate about Edmonia’s Cleopatra by writing, “it is a question whether a statue of the ghastly characteristics of this one does not overstep the bounds of legitimate art.” Why Edmonia’s depiction of death’s agonies should have tested boundaries recalls the ongoing clash between the passion of Catholic art and plain puritan reserve, between realism that was finding a new voice and the staleness of the hundred-year-old Greek revival.

  Death in itself was not a novel theme. Images of Jesus’ slow death on the cross enrich every Catholic church, home, and so on. Who could view Michelangelo's Pietà (ca. 1498), now in St. Peter's Basilica, without being moved? Beyond the world of saintly icons, the dead, nude Shipwrecked Mother and Child (1850) was so richly admired that Edmonia’s mentor, E. A. Brackett, gathered and reprinted favorable reviews. Cleopatra’s death was food for many artists: Claude Bertin produced a bust in the late 1600s, now in the Louvre. François Barois carved Cléopâtre mourant, in 1700. Bartholomo Neroni, called Riccio, had drawn it. John Parker, Guido Cagnacci, Antoine Rivalz, and Gérard de Lairesse had painted it. An engraving of Guido Reni’s painting appeared in the Art-Journal in 1861. In Rome, Damià Campeny, a follower of Canova, carved a dead Lucretia in a pose strikingly similar to Edmonia’s queen. Dramatists too numerous to mention have staged agonizing death scenes since classical Greece – by suicide, murder, and combat – and not without emotive excess and gory props. Giuseppe Verdi’s Aïda, first performed in 1871 was triumphant. It ends in a vivid suicide as the Ethiopian princess shares her lover’s fate.

  Not every important critic commented on Edmonia’s historic entry. However, more than one hundred years later, historians such as Judith Wilson continue to compare the competing visions – Edmonia’s and Story’s – of Cleopatra:

  The difference between the two artists’ treatment of the fabled queen’s suicide is striking. Story’s dying monarch slouches glamorously in resignation … Although her massive frame and air of grave dignity convey both her former force of character and imperial might, the overall mood is one of defeat and despair. In contrast, the upper torso of Lewis’s sovereign arches back and her head is thrown up and over to one side … Even in death, Lewis seems to say, the Queen of the Nile radiates the indomitable pride and wily independence that precluded her surrender to the Romans.”[650]

  Yes, use of “indomitable” and “wily” echoes New England mentors’ early impressions of Edmonia as if the words shared some spiritual DNA.

  News of a Massacre

  To celebrate July Fourth, the Centennial crowded its main events into Philadelphia’s historic Independence Square. A Virginia regimental band played the southern sentiments of “Dixie” and “My Maryland.” Did anyone sing “John Brown’s Body?” Veterans – in Union blue and Confederate gray – marched down Chestnut Street. It was a presidential election year, mandatory for every pol to speak. In the Square, waves of jubilation honored battles, heroes, and the power of the Declaration of Independence. Susan B. Anthony and her suffragettes surprised officials by seizing the podium to read their Declaration of Independence of Women. It hardly made a ripple in the flood of words.

  Two days later came a resounding shock – Sioux warriors had wiped out the celebrated General George A. Custer and the entire Seventh Cavalry! It seemed unbelievable. As more details emerged, it had to be accepted. Hard-riding warriors led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull annihilated an American army, scalping corpses where they lay.

  Edmonia must have worried about her brother living in Bozeman, only two hundred miles west of the carnage. They might never see each other again.

  Articles about “red devils” filled the press and set off cries for revenge. Attributed to General Sheridan, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” became the customary comment. Punitive Army expeditions chased the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Blackfoot – who sometimes counterattacked.

  The aftermath of Custer’s shocking defeat still held page one when news came of a different sort of massacre in South Carolina. Touched off by insults during a Fourth of July parade, a white mob drove more than 150 blacks from their homes in Hamburg.[651] Seven died; only one was white. The mob spent the night looting. It was an omen of Jim Crow rising. Many Americans shrugged it off as natural, the outcome of righteous racial dominance.

  Hamburg echoed the carnage at Colfax LA three years earlier. There, a white supremacist group executed fifty members of the mostly-colored Reconstruction state militia who had trusted a white flag of truce to lay down their arms after a gory confrontation.

  Slavery had ended, but terrorism took its place. Fearing black equality – education, economic power, the right to bear arms, sexuality, political influence, legacy, and all the other advantages enjoyed by Americans – white supremacists acted with the implicit blessing of the power elite. Often hiding under hoods, they attacked Roman Catholics as well as blacks. Anti-Reconstruction propagandists distorted the character of c
olored Americans on a massive scale. “Redeemers,” who pretended morality by adopting a pet name for Jesus Christ, sought votes by denouncing Federal programs and power, by calling opponents “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags.”

  President Grant’s denunciation did little to relieve the sense of betrayal felt by colored Americans. For the public at large, the Hamburg massacre was completely overshadowed by Custer’s shattering defeat at the hands of an ‘inferior’ race. Colored people were vulnerable, unsure of their standing. Talk of the Centennial’s wonders took a rueful edge. The mass murders certified that the promise of Reconstruction, implemented by “radical” Republicans in Congress ten years earlier, was to be shredded.

  Philadelphia Blackout

  Despite the news and Philadelphia’s summer heat and humidity, Edmonia kept her post beside The Death of Cleopatra. Unfazed by loutish assaults, she was deeply hurt by the negativity of well-dressed blacks.

  The Christian Recorder had monitored her career for years. Its editor, Bishop Benjamin T. Tanner, had pleaded for black participation in the Centennial, in particular for the memorial to Bishop Allen.[652] Inexplicably during the expo, he had barely mentioned her, only a note of her staying at Mrs. Young’s boarding house. Adding to the mystery, Bishops Arnett, Payne, and others who championed her to create something for the Centennial less than a year earlier apparently had little say.

  The Recorder employed aging Robert M. Douglass, Jr., as its art critic. His original review of the Centennial trembled with admiration for three white artists.[653] While ignoring Edmonia, he reported the medals won by Bannister for art and by Ashbourne for his inventions without describing the astonishment at their color. It seems talk of the stir was taboo.

  Finally, two weeks before the expo closed, the Recorder gave way to a “Letter to the Editor” from John Patterson Sampson. He was a noted teacher and lawyer who had written from Washington DC more than ten days earlier the following comment, headed “CLEOPATRA.”