Edmonia Lewis

Mary Edmonia Lewis ( * probably July 4, 1844 in Greenbush, Rensselaer County, New York, † September 17, 1907 in Hammersmith, London, England) was an American sculptor. She was the first African-American sculptor who achieved in the international art world fame and recognition.

Life

Her father was of African descent from Haiti, her mother was half Indian ( Mississauga Ojibwe Indians ) and half African descent. Lewis' mother was known as an excellent weaver and craftswoman.

To Lewis' ninth year of life around both parents died within a year. Lewis and her older brother, Samuel, then lived for the next three years with the sisters of her mother. Lewis and her aunt sold Indian handicrafts to tourists and visitors of Niagara Falls, Toronto and Buffalo. Samuel became a successful businessman and gold diggers and funded the education of his sister, only at New York Central College, and when they rebelled there, at Oberlin College in Cleveland.

The Oberlin College at that time was one of the first institutions of higher education, which began and women and different ethnic groups as students and decidedly occurred as an institution as of teachers and students here as a champion of abolitionism. The decision for the Oberlin changed Lewis' life critical, as they liberated there loads of their origin could start with art studies. Her style was even more conservative and eclectic, an Academic art in the sense of neo-classicism and Romanticism, but its commercial and personal success did not diminish.

Career as a sculptor

After she finished college in 1863, Lewis moved to Boston, where he studied at the famous sculptor Edward Augustus Brackett. Under his guidance, she made her own sculptor tool and sold her first sculpture, a female hand, for 8 dollars. In 1864 she opened her studio to the public for the first exhibition of her work.

Slavery opponents and civil war heroes inspired them, and they met with the Colonel Robert Gould Shaw of the Union together, the commander of a North African States Regiment of Massachusetts. Lewis was inspired by him to be a bust, which so impressed the family Shaw that she bought this tribute.

Early works, which proved to be popular, were portraits in the form of medallions of abolitionist John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison. Also, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and especially of his epic poem The Song of Hiawatha was inspired Lewis.

For further studies she went to Rome in 1865. Is on her passport from 1865: " M. Edmonia Lewis is a young black woman who was thrown in a trip to Italy, because she had shown great talent as a sculptor. "The established sculptor Hiram Powers conceded Lewis place in his studio one. She came into a circle expatriate artist and created her own studio in the premises, which once held the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova.

In Rome, Lewis spent most of her career. She continued working on her classical technique as to the content, was influenced by the antique style and helped him back to life. They went so far as to depict people in a tunic rather than in their everyday clothes.

She scored high prices for their works. 1873, the New Orleans Picayune: " Edmonia has fished two $ 50,000 contracts. " Her popularity made ​​her studio into a tourist attraction. Lewis's rise to fame has been accompanied by numerous exhibitions, for example in 1870 in Chicago and 1871 in Rome.

One of the major successes of her career was the participation in the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. She was admitted for a 1300 -kg marble effigy of Cleopatra in her death throes, wrote of the JS Ingraham, it was " the most remarkable piece" of the exhibition. The statue attracted thousands of visitors, many of whom were shocked by the representation of death. After that Cleopatra came into a warehouse and disappeared without a trace. 120 years later, it was rediscovered in an auction at Sotheby's and is the Smithsonian Institution after its review.

A confirmation of its reputation as an artist was Lewis 1877, when the former U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant was painted by her and was delighted with the result. At the end of the 1880s, the interest was lost on classicism and thus also to Lewis ' work. They continued to work in marble and more frequently on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church.

Death

Years has been speculation about the place of her death, was to found out by recent research that she had last lived in Hammersmith in London and died in hospital on September 17, 1907.