The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis

by Harry Henderson

  [214] William Cullen Bryant, letter to the editor, NYT, Aug. 27, 1858.

  [215] Anna C. L. Q. Waterston, Adelaide Phillips, A Record. 2nd ed. ([Boston:] Cupples, Upham & Co., 1883).

  [216] BDET, May 24, 1866.

  [217] Carleton, Mar. 1867. The bust resembles an 1856 crayon portrait by Alonzo Hartwell, Helen Ruthven Waterston, Massachusetts Historical Society. See also Rev. Jones Very, “On Seeing the Portrait of Helen Ruthven Waterston,” in Poems and Essays (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1886), 473.

  [218] NYT, May 17, 1873, “she explains to you that the small statues and heads are for people of slender purses, for ‘you know we must sell our work if we want to live;’” H. L. Robbins to Cushman (approx. 1867), Papers of Charlotte Cushman, Letters vol. 12, no. 3654, Library of Congress, who speaks of “her little marble heads.”

  [219] Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717.

  [220] Ibid.

  [221] Freedmen’s Record, “Edmonia Lewis,” Jan. 1867.

  [222] For example, R. D. Dove, “Centennial Exhibition,” ChRec, Oct. 12, 1876, would decry realism ten years later as he criticized a European’s visualization of a freed slave:

  He seems to have taken a very low type of the race, a very poor specimen as a model, and to have copied it clearly. It could not well be more realistic. So true is it to nature, that it seems a great bronze photograph, if that were a possibility, and causes one to regret that it is formed of such enduring material…. The genius of the Austrian [sculptor], as he was not fortunate enough to obtain a fine model, should have supplied the deficiencies, and for the illustration and commemoration of as great an event as the ‘Abolition of Slavery in the U.S.’ The subject should have been endowed with beauty of form, grandeur of action and an ideal development approaching the heroic.

  [223] Murray, Emancipation, 20-23, quoted Clark, Great American Sculptures, 142, who likely had access to Tuckerman, Book, 603-604, and Wreford’s 1866 Athenæum interview.

  NOTES FOR 10. WILLIAM WETMORE STORY

  [224] NYT, May 17, 1873.

  [225] Jarves, The Art Idea, 281-282. The Libyan Sibyl was the most powerful prophet in Greek mythology.

  [226] Moritz Hartman, quoted in Mary E. Phillips, Reminiscences of William Wetmore Story (Chicago, New York: Rand McNally, 1897), 134.

  [227] Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl,” AtM, Apr. 1863, 473-481. Cf. Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth. A Life, A Symbol (New York: Norton, 1993), 151-163. Stowe, Tuckerman, Book, 577, and others quoted the Athenæum: “The Sibilla Libica has crossed her knees—an action universally held among the ancients as indicative of reticence or secrecy, and of power to bind. A secret-keeping dame she is, in the full-bloom proportions of ripe womanhood.”

  [228] Story to C. E. Norton, Aug. 15, 1861, in James, William Wetmore Story, II, 60-72.

  [229] Painter, Sojourner Truth, 139.

  [230] William Wetmore Story, Proportions of the Human Figure (London: Chapman and Hall, 1864), 11.

  [231] Whitney to Home, June 23, 1867, Payne MSS, 658.

  [232] Story to J. R. Lowell, Dec. 10, 1864, in James, William Wetmore Story, II, 147-151.

  [233] Story to C. E. Norton, 1863 or 1864, James, William Wetmore Story, II, 127.

  [234] Whitney to Home, Feb. 7, 1869, Payne MSS, 758-761.

  [235] Story to J. R. Lowell, Feb. 11, 1853, in James, William Wetmore Story, I, 253-264.

  [236] James, William Wetmore Story, I, 257-258.

  [237] William Wetmore Story, Roba di Roma (1864), II, 53-87, 94, 95, 176. Cf. Murray’s Handbook (1867), xxxvi, the Rome census, 1866, counted 4567 Jews “still compelled to live in the Ghetto or Jews’ quarter – a barbarous system.” Not counting foreigners, the population of Rome was 210,701 including 437 resident Protestants and 434 residents of jail. See also Urbino, American Woman, 225-227, who was horrified by the oppression of the Jews in Rome. A papal order of 1555, which condemned Jews to cruel rules, ended after 1870 and the installation of a secular government in Rome.

  [238] James, William Wetmore Story, I, 63-64.

  [239] Charles Sumner to Story, Jan. 1, 1864, in James, William Wetmore Story, II, 158.

  [240] Child, “A Chat.”

  [241] Passenger List, SS Persia, July 30, 1865. William Story and his wife arrived at New York. See also James, William Wetmore Story, II, 173-176. Mrs. Story called Stebbins’ work “the very worst thing I ever saw.”

  [242] Ellen Tucker Emerson, Milton [MA], Oct. 19, 1869, to father, Letters, I, 534-535. The baby appears to be two-year-old Edith (“Violet”) Forbes (born Oct. 28, 1867), daughter of Edith Emerson and William Hathaway Forbes, who had hired Edmonia to make the child’s portrait.

  NOTES FOR 11. A SECOND EMANCIPATION GROUP – 1866 to 1867

  [243] H. Honour, The Image of the Black in Western Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), IV/2, 100-106, 166-171. See also Nelson, The Color of Stone; S. L. Gilman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies,” Critical Inquiry 12 (1985): 204-242; K. Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 15-16; L. Collins, “Economies of the Flesh, Representing the Black Female Body in Art,” in Skin Deep, Sprit Strong. The Black Female Body in American Culture, ed. by K. Wallace-Sanders (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 99-127.

  [244] Story to C. E. Norton, Aug. 15, 1861, re his Libyan Sibyl (modeled 1861) in James, William Wetmore Story, II, 60-72. See also N. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun (1860), Chap. 14. Cf. W. J. Clark, Great American Sculptures (Philadelphia PA: Gebbie & Barrie Publ., 1878), 141-142; Nelson, The Color of Stone, 146-147, 151-152, 176-177.

  [245] Nelson, The Color of Stone, 129-131.

  [246] Thomas Ball, My Threescore Years (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892), 252-253; Nelson, The Color of Stone, 36-37, 127-128; K. P. Buick, Child of the Fire, 64-65.

  [247] Rogers, Randolph Rogers, 99-103; K. Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves, 76-77, 83-86, 102. See also Nelson, The Color of Stone, 131-133.

  [248] J. Rogers quoted in D. H. Wallace, John Rogers, the People’s Sculptor (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), 81.

  [249] H. Hosmer, Letters and Memories (New York: Moffat, Yard and co., 1912), 319-321, incl. illustration. See also Culkin, Hosmer, 126-127.

  [250] Murray, Emancipation, 225. See also Bearden and Henderson, A History, 115-125.

  [251] Child, letter to the editor, NASS, quoted in BL, Nov. 18, 1864.

  [252] Karcher, The First Woman, 336-337.

  [253] Freedmen’s Record, Jan. 1867; Child, “Illustrations of Human Progress.”

  [254] A-J, “The Freedmen’s Memorial to Abraham Lincoln,” Jan. 1, 1868, 8; Sherwood, Hosmer, 244-253, 276-277, 279-281; Hosmer, Letters, 227, 368-369. See also Nelson A. Primus, “Letter Feb. 3, 1867,” Correspondence 1867, Primus Papers II7-8, Connecticut Historical Society Library. Primus attributed Harriet Hosmer’s model to Edmonia in error.

  [255] Edmonia to Maria Weston Chapman, Feb. 5, 1867, MS.A.9.2 Vol. 32, no. 64. Boston Public Library. Reprinted in J. A. Porter, Modern Negro Art, Appendix.

  [256] Mr. Bowditch and Mr. Loring (probably Dr. Henry Ingersoll Bowditch and Loring Lothrop, both listed as committee members in Freedmen’s Record).

  [257] Maria Weston Chapman to Mary Estlin, Mar. 5, 1867, Estlin Papers, 1840-1884 Microfilm, Library of Congress.

  NOTES FOR 12. GROWING SUCCESS

  [258] Carleton, Mar. 1867.

  [259] Boston (MA) Post.

  [260] ChT, Apr. 7, 1872, was followed by notes in Der Frauen-anwalt. Verband deutscher Frauenbildungs- und Erwerb-Vereine (Berlin, Germany), SFDEB, BrDE, WoJ, and Daily Southern Cross (New Zealand). See also Urbino, American Woman, 229.

  [261] Hugh Edward Cholmeley (the last name was often misspelled and is pronounced CHUM-lee).

  [262] Ernst Burger, Franz Liszt: A Chronicle of His Life in Pictures and Documents (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 230. See also Nadine Helbig, “Franz Liszt in Rome,” in Raphaël Ledos
de Beaufort, Franz Liszt, the Story of His Life (Boston: Oliver Ditson Co., 1910), 207-226.

  [263] Urbino, American Woman, 229.

  [264] Tuckerman, Book, 603-604. Excerpted BDET, NASS.

  [265] Tachnedorus is usually known as Chief Logan or John Logan; Tecumseh led a confederation of Indian tribes against the United States in the Ohio area; The Seneca orator Sagoyewatha was called Red Jacket for a coat given him by the British, and he later received a peace medal from George Washington; Chief Black Hawk fought for the British in the War of 1812; Osceola, who led the Seminole resistance against their removal from Florida, sat for oil portraits which in turn inspired engravings and other mementos; Montezuma, who ruled the Aztecs during the Spanish conquest of Mexico, was the subject of a number of eighteenth-century operas; Guatimozin was the last Aztec emperor; Huáscar was an emperor of the Inca empire who engaged in a civil war with his brother, Atahualpa, who became the last emperor of the Incas; Malinche is also known as Malintzin and Doña Marina.

  [266] Whitney to Sarah Whitney, May 2, 1867, Whitney MSS. Cf. Payne MSS, 652, 662. Whitney and Manning sailed for Europe in February or March 1866. They stopped in Paris and in Florence where they met Hiram Powers, art critic-historian James Jackson Jarves, and Sarah Parker Remond, who was studying medicine. In Rome they rented an apartment one flight up at 107 Via Felice (now Via Sistina) with a vestibule, a good size salon, and two bedrooms for $25 a month, service included. Whitney soon found a studio up one flight of stairs on Via San Nicola da Tolentino for $13 a month. See also Payne MSS, 713, which noted Sarah Remond visited Rome around Apr. 17, 1868.

  [267] Tuckerman, Book, 605. Child, Letter to the editor, New York (NY) Independent, Jan. 10, 1867, had written, “the career which she [Harriet] opened has become so thronged with competitors that female sculptors have ceased to be a novelty.”

  [268] Whitney to Sarah Whitney, May 2, 1867, Whitney MSS.

  [269] Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Oct. 28, 1867, Whitney MSS.

  [270] Payne MSS, 824.

  [271] Whitney to Sarah Whitney, May 2, 1867, Whitney MSS.

  NOTES FOR 13. CUSHMAN AND THE OLD ARROW MAKER

  [272] Cushman, Her Letters, 204-208; Carleton, Mar. 1867; J. S. Dwight, “Mathieu’s Busts of the Composers;” AtM, Apr. 1868, 503-506; LRAU, Literary and Artistic, May 1868, 398-399. Wilhelm Mathieu had designed portraits of Palestrina, Mozart, and Beethoven. See also LRAU, Literary and Artistic, Nov. 1870, 398-400, refers to two more composers, Gluck and Mendelssohn.

  [273] Carleton, Mar. 1867; Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis.” Cf. Frances Densmore, Chippewa Customs (Washington DC: Gov’t Printing Office, 1929), 72, confirms the custom implied by the scene.

  [274] Frances Densmore, op. cit., 30-31, etc. “The man sat ‘crosslegged.’ … The woman ‘sat on her right foot’ with the left foot extending out on one side.”

  [275] Aleš Hrdlička, “Anthropology of the Chippewa,” in Holmes Anniversary Volume. Anthropological Essays (Washington, D.C.: J. W. Bryan Press, 1916), 198-227, compared measurements of 59 full-blooded Chippewa in Minnesota with other tribes and Europeans.

  [276] Devine, Historic Caughnawaga, 245-247; Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois, 221. Darren Bonaparte, “The First Families of Akwesasne,” People’s Voice, Apr. 15, 2005, accessed May 24, 2010, http://www.wampumchronicles.com/firstfamilies.html.

  [277] For example, Juanita Marie Holland, “Mary Edmonia Lewis’s Minnehaha: Gender, Race and the ‘Indian Maid,’” in Diaspora and Visual Culture, ed. by Nicholas Mirzoeff (London: Routledge, 2000), 45-56. See also Buick, Child of the Fire, 96-100, 125.

  [278] Cushman to Boston YMCA, May 1867, Papers of Charlotte Cushman, Library of Congress.

  [279] Alfred S. Woodworth to Cushman, July 30, 1867, Cushman Papers, Vol. XIV, #3934-6, Library of Congress. See also: BrDE, Miscellaneous Items, Aug. 10, 1867, announcing Cushman’s success raising funds.

  [280] St. Paul (MN) Northwestern Chronicle, “Miss Edmonia Lewis,” Oct. 2, 1875; Gay, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  NOTES FOR 14. THE GARDENS OF SALLUST

  [281] Murray’s Handbook (1867); Tuckerman, Book, 604; Boston (MA) Post.

  [282] Another former Canova studio is nearby on a small street running north from Via della Frezza to Via di San Giacomo (today Via Antonio Canova).

  [283] Anne Brewster, “American Artists in Rome,” Lippincott’s Magazine of Literature, Science, and Education, Feb. 1869, 197-199; Rogers, Randolph Rogers, 115. See also Shakspere Wood, The New Curiosum Urbis: A Guide to Ancient & Modern Rome (London: Thomas Cook & Son, 1875), 91: “It is now turned into coach houses.”

  [284] Kim J. Hartswick, The Gardens of Sallust (University of Texas Press, 2004). Sallust (86-34BC) was a wealthy historian whose famous gardens contained a number of pavilions and monumental sculptures. The area gave way to urban development around 1880.

  [285] NYT, May 17, 1873.

  [286] According to Murray’s Handbook and other guides, her studio was at 8 Piazza [or Via] di San Nicola da Tolentino from 1867 to 1882 when she moved next door to no. 9 (consecutive numbers are adjacent, not odd across the street from even). A small piazza still exists by the church across the street and can be found on Figure 17. See also NYT, May 17, 1873. A German Jesuit College now extends from Nos. 5 to 10 Via di San Nicola da Tolentino.

  NOTES FOR 15. PARIS 1867 AND MORE

  [287] Frank Leslie, [pseud., Henry Carter], Report on the Fine Arts (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1868), 34.

  [288] Ibid.

  [289] See Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Freedman, accessed May 1, 2012, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1979.394.

  [290] Cf. Jarves, The Art Idea, 283-284.

  [291] Tuckerman, Book, 581-582. Cf. James Jackson Jarves, The Art Idea, (1865) 283-284

  [292] Edmonia to Maria Weston Chapman, Aug. 6, 1867, MS.A.9.2 Vol. 32, no. 71. Boston Public Library. Reprinted in J. A. Porter, Modern Negro Art, Appendix:

  I have been remodeling my Freedman over from your kind criticism. I have made a motch [much] better work of it. I shall send you another photograph of it soon and I hope that before the end of the year, 1868, it will be in the hands of dear Mr. Garrison who has indeed been the friend of the poor slave. I hope dear Mrs. Chapman that you will forgive me for troubling you so often. Hoping this may find you in good health, I remain, Yours very sincerely, Edmonia Lewis, Care of Freeborn and Co., Rome, Italy. Edmonia Lewis.

  See also Edmonia’s undated letter in Swann Galleries, African-Americana, Feb. 26, 1998, lot 35: “You will please talk with Mrs. M. W. Chapman … she will tell you about other Freedmen. Believe me to remain in perfect submission to your judgment of my work. Edmonia Lewis.”

  [293] Child to Mrs. [Annie (Adams)] Fields, Nov. 25, 1865, Child MSS 1695. Huntington Library.

  [294] Whitney to Home, Feb. 7, 1869, Payne MSS, 758-761.

  [295] John T. Sargent, letter to the editor, BDET, quoted in NASS, Oct. 12, 1867. See also Indianapolis (IN) News, Nov. 18, 1878; Buffalo Historical Society, Annual Report (1885), 22, cites a plaster cast given to the Society’s collections by Dio Lewis’s brother; Walter Mayer, Buffalo and Erie Co. Historical Society email Aug. 4, 2008: not found in 1954.

  [296] ChRec, Oct. 26, 1867.

  [297] C. M. S., letter to the editor, “Bust of Dio Lewis, M.D.,” Boston (MA) Commonwealth, Dec. 14, 1867:

  Besides this general truth of the features and proportion, the artist has seized a happy pose of the head, which tones the almost overpowering vitality and directness of the doctor in a more genial and welcome mood. 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.

  [298] New Bedford (MA) Daily Mercury, “Bust of Dio Lewis,” Feb. 20, 1868.

  [299] Herald of Health and Journal of Physical Culture, “Bust of Dio Lewis,” Mar. 1868.

  [300] LRAU, Literary and Artistic, Oct. 1867, 318.

  [301] SFEl, June 12, 1868, quoted Cushman to the YMCA, May 1, 186
7, and added, “[The Wooing of Hiawatha] which was presented to the Young Men’s Christian Association through Miss Charlotte Cushman … has been suitably mounted and placed in position at the rooms of the Association in Tremont Temple, Boston.” Solon B, Cousins, Greater Boston YMCA, to Harry Henderson Aug. 25, 1969, reported the building burned to the ground in 1910 along with all records; the statue is not to be found.

  [302] Dwight’s Journal of Music, “Memorial Services in Honor of John Albion Andrew,” Dec. 7, 1867, 149-150.

  [303] Board of Women Managers for the Exhibit of the State of New York at the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893, Report (New York: Press of J. J. Little and Co., n. d.), 53. We are not sure when the WMCA acquired the piece.

  [304] Passenger list, SS Scotia, arriving New York June 30, 1868, listed Cushman (57, “Spinster”), Stebbins (52, “Sculptor”) [they were both about 52 at the time], and Mercer (35, “Servant”). Henry Stebbins (55, “Banker”) and Charles Stebbins (25), Emma’s brother and nephew, respectively, were also aboard. See also Leach, Bright Particular Star, 340 (chap. 28).

  [305] For more detailed photos of this and other works, see www.edmonialewis.com/links.htm.

  [306] SFC, Aug. 26, 1873.

  [307] Cf. Whitney, Feb. 7, 1869; NYDG, July 10, 1873; Indianapolis (IN) News, Nov. 18, 1878. Adamo Tadolini, who died in 1868, taught at the Accademia di San Luca, a Roman art school, and headed a family of sculptors. Giulio Tadolini inherited and operated the family atelier at 150 Via del Babuino, now the Canova Tadolini Museum. Other sculptor family members included Scipione, Tito, and Enrico.

  [308] New York (NY) Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Aug. 1, 1868. The feature also pictured The Wooing of Hiawatha. Leslie and Squire visited Rome after the 1867 Paris expo.

  [309] Wreford, “A Negro Sculptress.”

  [310] Tuckerman, Book, 603-604, was copied by NASS, New York (NY) Evening Post, and the Herald of Health and Journal of Physical Culture.

  NOTES FOR 16. RENEWAL OF THE SPIRIT