Drawing by Edmonia Lewis
Title/Subject: Urania, the Greek muse of astronomy
Artist: (Mary) Edmonia Lewis (née Wildfire) (American, 1845-1907)
Date: 1862
Type: drawing
Medium: graphite on paper
Dimensions: 14 1/2" h x 12" w
Collection: Paintings, Prints, Drawings and other Framed Items (RG 40)
Edmonia Lewis, part West Indian, part Chippewa (Ojibwe), was among the first black sculptors to achieve widespread international fame. Orphaned at an early age and raised by her maternal aunts, she was educated by an order of Black nuns in Baltimore. With support from her half brother, she attended Oberlin College from 1859-62. Her career there was disrupted by accusations of poisoning two white girls; she offered them spiced wine shortly before their sleigh ride, during which they became violently ill. Lewis was abducted and beaten, and left in a field. She was defended by Oberlin lawyer John Mercer Langston, a Black graduate of the College and its theological seminary; the charges against her were dropped. In her last year at Oberlin, she was accused of stealing art supplies and a frame. As a result, Lewis was not allowed to register for her last semester. Oberlin was known to be the first to admit Black and women students, with abolitionist professors and students at its founding; her treatment is difficult to reconcile with Oberlin's history.Lewis' drawing of Urania, the Greek muse of astronomy, came to the Archives from one of the descendants of her family. Edmonia made the drawing for a friend as a wedding present while at Oberlin in 1862. As she worked on it at night, a spill of candle wax discolored the area to the left of the figure's face. The volumetric forms in the drawing presage her talent for sculpture. The drawing is signed just under the right of the figure.
In 1863 Lewis travelled to Boston with an introduction to an anti-slavery lawyer, who in turn introduced her to a local sculptor, Edmund Brackett. She studied with him for a time, and asked the sculptor Anne Whitney, who had a studio in the same building, for lessons. The sales of copies of a bust she made in 1864 of Robert Gould Shaw, the leader of the first Black regiment in the Civil War, enabled her to go to Europe, where she visited France and England before settling in Rome. She joined other American women sculptors who were studying and working there. Her work differed from theirs as a person of dual cultural heritage, and she explored subjects from the Longfellow poem Song of Hiawatha and from the context of slavery.
She exhibited six sculptures at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, including The Death of Cleopatra. The piece was first exhibited to great acclaim and critics raved that it was the most impressive American sculpture in the show. Not long after its debut, however, Death of Cleopatra was presumed lost for almost a century.
Edmonia Lewis was a celebrity; her Roman studio was a frequent stop for the moneyed class on the Grand Tour. Her sculptures sold for thousands of dollars, and she had commissions from wealthy patrons on both sides of the Atlantic. She was irresistible to the press, but frustrated with the intense focus on her race.
Sources
Geoffrey Blodgett, Oberlin History, Essays and Impressions (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006).
Penny Dunford, A Biographical Dictionary of Women Artists in Europe and America Since 1850 (Hertfordshire, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990).
Penelope Green, "Overlooked No More: Edmonia Lewis, Sculptor of Worldwide Acclaim," New York Times, July 25, 2018.
The Death of Cleopatra, Smithsonian American Art Museum, accessed 1/18/2021.