"Edmonia Lewis has inspired generations of minority artists for over 130 years, even as the mainstream art world resisted recognizing the achievements of women and African Americans. She boldly breached barriers of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and class around the time of the Civil War and Reconstruction, an era when prejudices against these minorities were particularly virulent."
"She became the first African American sculptor to celebrate Emancipation with The Freed Woman and Her Child and the immortal Forever Free. She created figures from Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, popular cherubs, copies of classics, and religious works that readily sold. She created a famous bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, also sculpting Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, Horace Greeley, John Brown, Senator Charles Sumner, Bishop B. W. Arnett, John Cardinal McCloskey, and many others."
"She loved America, but she could not live in a society that cast her unfairly. Slighted by a few Americans even in Rome, she plotted her victorious return to the United States.Advertising Hagar in the Chicago Tribune, Lewis became the first African-American artist to link her race and name with artistic achievement. She shocked and mortified those who claimed African Americans lacked the capacity for intelligence and fine art by standing next to her works and explaining them for days on end. She was the first important female sculptor to take her work to California. At the 1876 Centennial exposition, she stunned the world with her sensational Death of Cleopatra, assuring her right to a place in history.
Edmonia Lewis was endowed not only with special gifts as an artist. Her shrewdness, creativity, perseverance, and passion enabled her to find support against all odds and ever press her case"
[Taken from http://www.edmonialewis.com/]
Two Samples of Her work
"Death of Cleopatra" 1876
"This work was exhibited in the Women's Pavilion at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 with 600 other sculptures by various other artists, and caused a sensation due to the realistic portrayal of Cleopatra. The statue shows female power and vulnerability (power in the fact that Cleopatra was a femme fatale, and vulnerability in the fact that she is dead.) Lewis may be making reference to how Cleopatra was thwarted in her attempts for power, but in suicide she has control. Lewis was quoted by William Wells Brown in "The Rising Son" (1874): 'I have a strong sympathy for all women who have struggled and suffered' " [Taken from http://www.uiowa.edu/~boosf/galleries/afampainting.htm]
Forever Free
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