Mary Edmonia Lewis
July 4, 1844 -1945
Sculptor
THE FIRST of African American, Haitian, and Ojibwe descent woman to gain fame and recognition as a sculptor in the international fine arts world. MOST OF HER SCULPTING ART WAS DONE IN ROME
Mary was born on July 4, 1844, in Greenbush, New York; her father was Haitian of African descent, while her mother was of Mississauga Ojibwe and African-American descent. Her mother was a craftswoman.
where Lewis spent most of her adult career. Her studies there contributed to her neoclassical techniques and subject matter. Hiram Powers helped to launch her career. She was given space in the studio Powers owned and he introduced her into the right circles. The surroundings of the classical world greatly inspired her and influenced her work. She recreated the classical art style in her own work. For instance, she presented people in her sculptures as draped in robes rather than in contemporary clothing Lewis pushed the limits with the accuracy of her sculptures. She never generalized the appearance of those she sculpted. Instead, she found truth in the particular and used that in her work. She wanted to be as realistic as possible.
Mary Lewis’s final years are shrouded in different theories as most famous artist that passes away mysteriously. Until the 1890s, she continued to exhibit her work and was even visited by Frederick Douglass in Rome, but little is known about the last decade of her life activities. Recent scholarship has found that she lived in the Hammersmith area of London, England before her death on September 17, 1907, in the Hammersmith Borough Infirmary.
In 2002, the scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Edmonia Lewis on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
HER ART SCULPTURES:
John Brown Medallions, 1864-5
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (plaster), 1864
Anne Quincy Waterston, 1866
A Freed Woman and Her Child, 1866
The Old Arrow-Maker and His Daughter, 1866
The Marriage of Hiawatha, 1866-7
Forever Free, 1867
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (marble), 1867
Hagar in the Wilderness, 1868
Madonna Holding the Christ Child, 1869
Hiawatha, collection of the Newark Museum, 1868
Minnehaha, collection of the Newark Museum, 1868
Indian Combat, Carrara marble, 30″ high, collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1868
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1869
Bust of Abraham Lincoln, 1870
Asleep, 1872
Awake, 1872
Poor Cupid, 1873
Moses, 1873
Hygieia, 1874
Hagar, 1875
The Death of Cleopatra, marble, 1876, collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum John Brown, 1876, Rome, plaster bust
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1876, Rome, plaster bust
General Ulysses S. Grant, 1877–1878
Veiled Bride of spring, 1878
John Brown, 1878–1879
The Adoration of the Magi, 1883
Her Legacy:
The permanent collections of Mary Lewis are housed permanently at the Howard University Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.