The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis

by Harry Henderson

  [512] Cleveland, Story, 110; NYT, “Passengers Arrived,” July 6, 1873, noted “Mrs. Edmonia Lewis” arrived on the French Line steamship around June 17.

  [513] NYDG, edited by journalist David Goodman Croly, started in Mar. 1873. Croly had coined the word “miscegenation” meaning racial mixing. Many states had banned marriage of whites with other races since colonial times without addressing the sexual abuse of slaves.

  [514] NYDG, July 10, 1873. Edmonia mentioned Garrison, Brackett, Shaw, Hosmer, Powers, Cushman, Bute, and others.

  [515] NYT, obituary, June 28, 1873, “The Late Hiram Powers,” July 2, 1873. Powers died June 27, 1873. Cf. Katherine C. Walker, “American Studios in Rome and Florence,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1866, 101-105, Powers proclaimed his national loyalty included a preference for American clay, which he regularly ordered.

  [516] ChT, July 15, 1873. The article was also excerpted by Fort Wayne (IN) Gazette, WoJ, BrDE, SFPaA, WoJ.

  [517] NNEra, “Edmonia Lewis is very busy,” May 23, 1873, 2.

  [518] Frederick Douglass, editorial, “Miss Edmonia Lewis.”

  NOTES FOR 30. TRAVEL CROSS-CONTINENT

  [519] San Francisco (CA) News Letter, Men We Know: “William Alvord,” Sept. 23, 1876.

  [520] SFDEB, Feb. 8, 1872, July 20, 1872, repeated in Weekly Salt Lake City (UT) Daily Tribune, Folio: a Monthly Journal of Music, Drama, Art and Literature, New Orleans (LA) Picayune, and New York (NY) American Missionary. (In our sources, she never claimed receiving more than $3,000 for a Madonna and Child for the Marquis of Bute in 1869 and $3,000 for Hagar sold by raffle in Chicago, for her artwork.) See also SFDEB, Apr. 27, 1872; Sept. 28, 1872; Oct. 26, 1872.

  [521] SFDEB, Personal Items, Apr. 5, 1873, repeated DKJ and Monroe (WI) Liberal Press.

  [522] SFPaA, “Edmonia Lewis,” Oct. 15, 1870.

  [523] SFEl, “The Statuary of Miss Edmonia Lewis,” June 12, 1868. See also Jennie Carter, letter to the editor, SFEl, May 15, 1868, reprinted by Eric Gardner, Jennie Carter: a Black Journalist of the Early West (University Press of Mississippi, 2007), 33; SFEl, June 21, 1867, cited in P. M. Montesano, Some Aspects of the Negro Question in San Francisco, 1849-1870 (San Francisco: R and E Research Associates, 1973).

  [524] SFDMC, Arrivals at the Hotels, Aug. 23, 1873.

  [525] SFC, Aug. 26, 1873.

  [526] San Francisco Art Association, Minutes, cited in Montesano, Some Aspects, 68.

  [527] For example, an ad from the SFEl, August or September 1873, reproduced in Wolfe, Edmonia Lewis, 87, recognized her mission: “[it] cannot but fill our hearts with pride as a contradiction of the assertions that we have never produced an artist of true genius.”

  [528] SFPaA, Aug. 30, 1873.

  [529] SFDEB, Aug. 28, 1873.

  [530] SFDMC, Statuary and Paintings, Aug. 30, 1873.

  [531] Popular in Italy, where they are called putti [little boys], they portray nude male infants.

  [532] SFC, Sept. 3, 1873.

  [533] SFEl, Sept. 6, 1873.

  [534] SFDEB, Sept. 6, 1873. “The lowest acceptable bids are as follows: ‘Hiawatha’s Marriage,’ $550; bust of Lincoln, $550; ‘Asleep,’ $650; ‘Awake,’ $500; ‘Love in a Trap,’ $500.” It added, “Her pleasant face and gentle attractive manners are as interesting to many as the work of her hands.”

  [535] SFDEB, Sept. 8, 1873. Mrs. C. L. Low purchased the Marriage of Hiawatha.

  [536] SFPaA, Sept. 6, 1873.

  [537] SFC, “San Jose Invaded,” Sept. 30, 1873.

  [538] SFC, “Farmer’s Festival,” Oct. 2, 1873.

  [539] San Jose Library, “Edmonia Lewis Sculptures. http://www.sjpl.org/tags/edmonia-lewis (visited Feb. 18, 2011).

  [540] SFDEB, Oct. 2, 1873.

  [541] SJWM, Sept. 27, 1873.

  [542] San Jose (CA) Patriot, quoted in P. M. Montesano, “Mystery of the San Jose Statues,” Urban West, Mar.-Apr. 1968, 25-27.

  [543] SFC, “Farmer’s Festival,” Oct. 2, 1873; SFEl, Personal, Oct. 4, 1873; San Jose (CA) Evening News, “Oldest Janitor in San Jose,” Oct. 16, 1917, reported, “Mrs. Knox-Goodrich paid Miss Lewis $500 for the bronzes.” The “bronze” description was in error. Was the price also in error? The original prices were $650 for Asleep and $500 for Awake. Did she buy two for the price of one, or did she pay $500 each? The buyer was a trustee of the library.

  [544] SJWM, editorial, Oct. 18, 1873.

  [545] SFDMC, Arrivals at the Hotels, Oct. 23, 1873.

  [546] San Jose (CA) Patriot, cited by Lauren Gilbert, San Jose Public Library, to author, Mar. 8, 2011.

  [547] Appletons’ Cyclopedia of American Biography (1888), s. v. “Lewis. Edmonia;” Pauline E. Hopkins, “Artists” Famous Women of the Negro Race, Colored American Magazine, Sept., 1902, 362-367, etc.

  [548] SFC, advertisement, “Geo. F. Lamson,” July 15, 1889, 7.

  [549] Boston (MA) Daily Traveller, Nov. 17, 1880.

  [550] Lail Gay, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [551] SJWM, Advertisement, Sept. 22, 1873. See Kirsten Pai Buick, Child of the Fire, 22-24, plate 3-4.

  [552] SFC, “Farmer’s Festival,” Oct. 2, 1873.

  [553] Henry Wreford, “A Negro Sculptress.”

  [554] Cf. Appletons’ Annual Cyclopædia … of the Year 1866, s. v. “Fine Arts;” Tuckerman, Book, 603-604.

  [555] Excerpts appeared in HDH, Local News, Sept. 12, 1873; Frederick Douglass, editorial, “Miss Edmonia Lewis,” NNEra, Sept. 25, 1873; WoJ, Concerning Women, Oct. 4, 1873; Ladies’ Repository: A Monthly Periodical, devoted to Literature, Arts, and Religion (Cincinnati, OH), Current History, Dec., 1873, 461.

  [556] Stylus (pseud.), “Philadelphia Letter,” SFPaA, Aug. 5, 1876; Placerville (CA) Mountain Democrat, Jan. 4, 1879, Apr. 12, 1879, Oct. 18, 1879; Ukiah City (CA) Press, Personal, Apr. 18, 1879; SFC, “Cultured Colored Women,” Nov. 13, 1887; San Jose (CA) News, Woman and Home, July 17, 1886; Oakland (CA) Tribune, Aug. 18, 1895.

  [557] Leeson, History of Montana, 1141; Miller, An Illustrated History, 374-376; Bozeman (MT) Courier, Apr. 6, 1896.

  [558] E. Lina Houston, Early History of Gallatin County (Bozeman: Bozeman Chronicle Print, 1933), 14.

  [559] HDH, Jan. 18, 1871; HDH, Aug. 18, 1873, attributed to the Rural New Yorker (The following day, HDH noted a visit to Helena from her brother.); HDH, Sept. 12, 1873, also in Ladies’ Repository (Cincinnati, Oh.).

  NOTES FOR 31. NEW YORK RECEPTION – 1874

  [560] New York (NY) Progressive American, reprinted in NNEra, Feb. 12, 1874. The reception was held Jan. 13.

  [561] Johnson, Autobiography, 155.

  [562] NYT, Passengers Sailed, Jan. 25, 1874: “Miss Edmonia Lewis” sailed on the French Line SS Péreire from New York for Le Havre the preceding day.

  [563] Brown, Rising Son, 465-468; Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [564] Cf. Hrdlička, “Anthropology of the Chippewa,” which expressed distress that Chippewa brains might be larger than European brains. He rationalized, “The size of the head as a whole is exceptionally good, exceeding that of many other tribes and comparing favorably with that of whites …it is probably … that the skull is somewhat thicker, so that the interior of the skull and brain are slightly smaller than in whites, as is general among Indians.”

  NOTES FOR 32. PRODUCING THE DEATH OF CLEOPATRA – 1872 to 1875

  [565] Gay, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [566] A-J, Art in Rome, Apr. 1872, 131-132. Cf. Gay, “Edmonia Lewis,” indicates Edmonia started her masterwork in 1872. See also NYDG, July 10, 1873; Forney, A Centennial Commissioner, 112-118; Art Journal (New York, N.Y.) 2, Apr. 1876. 127-128.

  [567] SFDEB, Art Notes, Sept. 28, 1872; repeated in Cincinnati (OH) Enquirer and ChRec. See also New York (NY) Progressive American, reprinted in NNEra, Feb. 12, 1874.

  [568] St. Louis (MO) Post and Dispatch, Jan. 23, 1879, and other news articles mention Lefano Maisit as a Roman sculptor who attested in a deposition to the quality and fidelity of a work done in 1874 and sent to St. Louis. Perhaps he was her studio mana
ger.

  [569] NYDG, July 10, 1873.

  [570] A-J, Mar. 1870.

  [571] Story to C. E. Norton, May 3, 1862, in James, William Wetmore Story, II, 72-73: “In [Sappho] I have gone into Greekland, as in the Sibyl I went into Africa, and in the Cleopatra into Egypt.” Cf. NYT, Artists and Their Work, June 13, 1882, insisted Cleopatra had “full lips and slightly different modeling of the face that denote a mixture of negro blood” upon seeing it at the Metropolitan Museum.

  [572] Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, Chap. 14, quoted above. See also Amelia Edwards, A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1899), 122, who discounted the accuracy of a famed bas-relief portrayal of Cleopatra, which showed a less conspicuous profile, on the Dendera Temple; Buick, “Sentimental Education,” 215-217, summarizes criticisms of ancient coins as accurate representations of Cleopatra’s profile.

  [573] Pascal, “The Misery of Man without God.”

  [574] The griffin has the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion.

  [575] Richardson, “Edmonia Lewis:” “The palla, draped over the left arm of the throne, with its floral border and fringed hem conforms, in stylized fashion, to Apuleius’ description of Isis’ outer garment, indicating Lewis’ acknowledgement of the cult of Isis to which Cleopatra VII allied herself.”

  [576] Sherwood, Hosmer, 239-241. Hosmer’s modestly draped work attracted critical attention at the Dublin Exhibition of 1865.

  [577] Ibid.

  [578] Forney, A Centennial Commissioner, 112-118. See also United States Senate, John W. Forney, Secretary of the Senate, 1861-1868, accessed June 25, 2010, http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/SOS_John_Forney.htm; “Philadelphia Press,” in Centennial Newspaper Exhibition 1876 (New York: George P. Rowell & Co., 1876), 277-278.

  [579] Editorial, Philadelphia (PA) Press, reprinted in Alexandria (VA) People's Advocate, July 1, 1876, and quoted in Philip S. Foner, “Black Participation in the Centennial of 1876,” Negro History Bulletin 39 (1976): 533-538. See also John W. Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 336-339. Forney’s newspaper was also the first major daily to hire a colored correspondent.

  [580] Ex. 34:29. The English version of the Latin Vulgate renders it: “And when Moses came down from the Mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord.” Other translations speak of his face “shining.”

  [581] Edmonia to Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Sept. 11, 1876, Hampton University Archives. Lewis offered the three busts to Hampton in return for a donation of $10 to cover shipping costs. She sold them to Centennial buyers at $8 each; Memphis Daily Appeal, Local Paragraphs, Oct. 19, 1876, 4, told of Edmonia presenting three busts to Fisk University. See also Flotte, “Edmonia Lewis,” reported that two busts, John Brown and Longfellow, both signed Edmonia Lewis and dated 1876, were made of plaster painted to resemble terra cotta. Flotte noted the presence of a powder that could have been used to cast additional copies.

  [582] Daniel D. Pratt, “Address,” Memorial Addresses For The Life And Character Of Charles Sumner April 27, 1874 (Washington: Gov’t Print. Off., 1874), 29-36.

  [583] Democrat Preston Smith Brooks from South Carolina became infamous for nearly killing Sumner with a heavy cane in the Senate chamber.

  [584] Edmonia to W. H. Johnson, July 29, 1875, reprinted in Johnson, Autobiography, 166.

  [585] Albany (NY) Argus, “The African M.E. Church,” Aug. 25, 1875, quoted in Johnson, Autobiography, 46-49, reported Edmonia’s presentation. Johnson eventually offered the plaster bust to the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia. The hospital moved in 1908 and merged with Mercy Hospital in 1948, moving into a large building in 1954. Max Silverstein, Philadelphia, to Harry Henderson Dec. 23, 1994: The bust could not be located. See also Philadelphia (PA) Times, “Negro Charity Ball,” Dec. 14, 1897, DSCUP; Philadelphia (PA) Tribune, “Dancing for Charity,” Dec. 18, 1897, DSCUP.

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

  [587] St. Paul (MN) Pioneer Press, Oct. 9; Oct. 12, 1875. Her color was not mentioned in the news item or the ad. Other newspapers – New York (NY) Evening Post and ChT – picked up this story more than one month too late but ran it as news.

  NOTES FOR 33. PHILADELPHIA, 1876

  [588] BDET, Art and Artists, May 12, 1876, p. 6, col. 5-6.

  [589] “Centennial Tribute to the Negro,” Convention of Colored Newspapermen, Cincinnati, Aug. 4, 1875, 4. See also Peter H Clark, Letter to the editor, SFPaA, Aug. 21, 1875, estimated the Pacific coast could raise $1000; J. S. H., “Indiana Correspondence,” ChRec, Sept. 23, 1875.

  [590] Douglass’ Monthly, Feb., 1862.

  [591] Philip S. Foner, “Black Participation in the Centennial of 1876,” Negro History Bulletin 39 (1976): 533-538.

  [592] Stylus (pseud.), “Philadelphia Letter,” SFPaA, Aug. 5, 1876; ChRec, Oct. 12, 1876, Dec. 14, 1876, 4; USCC, dept. VI, 27, under Agriculture, Veterinary Appliances, exhibit 701, Ashbourne & Co., Philadelphia: Cocoanut cream oil and soap, Ink from cocoanut shell, and Cocoanut tooth-powder, cosmetic.

  [593] Rydell, All the World’s a Fair, 28-29.

  [594] Henry T. Finck, Wagner and His Works: The Story of His Life, with Critical Comments. 5th ed. (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898): II, 506-510.

  [595] Elizabeth D. Gillespie, A Book of Remembrance (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1901): 321. Cf. USCC, Women’s Pavilion, 101 (715 … a. The African Sibyl, b. Lord Brownlow’s Gates]; Culkin, Hosmer, 125-128, 133-134. Having promised the women’s committee to represent women, Hosmer’s entry appeared in the Italian section of the Women’s Pavilion, a square wooden building given mostly to crafts. Also in the Italian section: bas reliefs by Margaret Foley and two works by Florence Freeman.

  [596] Thorp, The Literary Sculptors, 93.

  [597] Unless indicated otherwise, references to the Richard Allen monument appear in the following sources: ChRec, “The Allen Monument,” Nov. 12, 1874; Apr. 13, 1876; June 29, 1876; ChRec, Brevities, May 11, 1876; Andrew J. Chambers, letters to the editor, “Allen Monument,” ChRec, June 29, 1876 and Sept. 7, 1876; Philadelphia (PA) Press, May 15, 1876; June 12, 1876; June 13, 1876 and Sept. 23, 1876, quoted in Kachun (below); ChRec, “Destruction of the Allen Monument,” Oct. 5, 1876; ChRec, “Bishop Allen Monument,” Nov. 9, 1876; Mitch Kachun, “Before the Eyes of All Nations,” Pennsylvania History 65 (Summer 1998): 300-323; “Historic Bust of Richard Allen Returns to Phila.,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 11, 2010, accessed Oct. 8, 2010, http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20100611_Historic_bust_of_Richard_Allen_returns_to_Phila_.html.

  [598] Mary Sayre Haverstock, et al., Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900: A Biographical Dictionary (Oberlin OH: Oberlin College Library, 2000); 1870 U.S. census; History Of Cincinnati And Hamilton County (Cincinnati OH: S. B. Nelson & Co., 1894): 908-909.

  [599] Kachun, op. cit., esp. 315. See also Gary B. Nash, First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory (Philadelphia: Univ. Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 268; Richard S. Newman, Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (New York: NYU Press, 2008), 293.

  [600] Susanna W. Gold, Temple University, Feb. 1, 2011.

  [601] USCC, dept. IV, 148.

  [602] ChRec, “Allen Monument,” June 29, 1876; ChRec, “Allen Monument a Success,” September 7, 1876.

  [603] ChRec, “Allen’s Monument,” October 26, 1876.

  [604] Melba Joyce Boyd, Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825-1911 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994): 228-229; Kathleen Ann Clark, Defining Moments: African American Commemoration & Political Culture in the South 1865-1923 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005): 122-123.

  [605] Salisbury, op. cit.

  [606] ChRec, Oct. 5, 1876. Cf. Nelson, The Color of Stone, 57.

  [607] NYT, Dec. 29, 1878.


  [608] The building survives in Fairmont Park as the Please Touch Museum.

  [609] (Robert M. Douglass, Jr.), “Centennial Exhibition, by RD” ChRec, Sept. 28, 1876. Cf. USCC, dept. IV, 118.

  [610] USCC, dept. IV, 91: “63 Pezzicar, F[rancesco]., Trieste, The Abolition of Slavery in the United States, 1863 (statue in bronze).”

  [611] William Dean Howells, “Sennight at the Centennial,” AtM, July 1876.

  [612] NYT, “Bronze Statue of a Slave,” May 25, 1876.

  [613] R. D. Dove, “Centennial Exhibition,” ChRec, Oct. 12, 1876.

  [614] New York (NY) Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Aug. 5, 1876. Printers still generally relied on engravings until the 1890s although the half-tone screen technique of rendering photos had been introduced in 1873.

  [615] Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Hiawatha, modeled 1871-1872, carved 1874, accessed July 28, 2011, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2001.641.

  [616] Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Reminiscences (New York: Century Co., 1913), I, 107-113.

  [617] Story, Medea, 1866. Marble, 76¼ in.

  [618] Semiramus was an Assyrian queen whose legends involve lust, suicide, and unrequited love.

  [619] Thorp, The Literary Sculptors, 174, indicates they were there. They do not appear in USCC. Edward Strahan [pseud., Earl Shinn], Masterpieces of the Centennial International Exhibition (Philadelphia: Gebbie & Barrie, 1876-1878): Vol. 1, 214-217, accessed Nov. 24, 2010, http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/DLDecArts.MastCent01, mentions these three works only in passing while confirming the appearance of Medea and Beethoven.

  [620] Cooper, Vinnie Ream, 207-209.

  [621] Gay, “Edmonia Lewis;” USCC, dept. IV, 52, 59: Memorial Hall, Gallery K. No. 1231, Death of Cleopatra. Her other pieces were relegated to the interior of the Annex, Gallery no. 20: No. 1409, Asleep, Hiawatha’s Marriage, Old Arrow Maker and His Daughter, and terra-cotta colored busts of Longfellow, Sumner, and John Brown.

  [622] Rydell, All the World’s a Fair, 14.

  [623] Newport (RI) Daily News, Sept. 19, 1878, 4: “At the Centennial she was insulted and struck because she was a negress claiming to have done the works she did;” BDET, Art and Artists, Sept. 16, 1878, 6; Atchison (KS) Globe, Oct. 8, 1878, 1; DKJ, “Miss Edmonia Lewis,” Oct. 21, 1878, 3.