The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis (39 page)

A progressive reporter from out-of-town quickly noted, “except
The Forced Prayer
by [Pietro] Guarnerio,
The Death of Cleopatra
excites more admiration and gathers larger crowds around it than any other work of art in the vast collection of Memorial Hall”
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She could point out there were other renditions of Cleopatra, a sly way of inviting comparisons.
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The
Albany (NY) Sunday Press
emphasized Story’s work lacked “that exquisite faultless genius she has exhibited.”
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Another interviewer more than a dozen years later recalled the effect if not every detail: “its conception differs essentially from that of Story. The dead Queen lies back in her chair of state holding the poisonous cup. Much breadth of handling and delicacy of treatment is shown in this effort.”
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Hundreds of long-time abolitionists and admirers of Edmonia’s portrait heroes attended the celebration. She must have met old friends of Harriot Hunt and of Charlotte Cushman, both of whom had passed away. The avuncular Thomas Ball, vacationing from Florence with his family but not exhibiting, may have paused to exchange greetings. Soon after the opening, Col. Forney surely welcomed her and introduced her to his entourage. Her brother likely appeared, eager to praise her success.
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One visitor gave a rare impression of her to the
Philadelphia Sunday Mercury:
“She is about medium height, with a pretty and interesting face. Her soft brown eyes are an index of a pleasant, and her smiling face of a merry, disposition. Her manners are unaffected and charming, while her conversation is bright, affable and witty. She is quite an accomplished linguist, and is remarkably shrewd and intelligent.”
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Another writer took satisfaction in the
San Francisco Pacific Appeal,
“the white man … despite his prejudice has to concede a niche in the column of Fame a suitable place for the representative of the colored race, and is forced to judge the articles on exhibition, not by color line or prejudice, but by intrinsic value.”

A measure of her standing with a progressive audience may be the relative coverage allotted by the Centennial Publishing Company of Chicago, rushed into print to capture tourist sales and marred by errors. Writing under the pen name Ben Beverly, John Thomas Dale gave the comparatively unknown Edmonia Lewis nearly two times the words used for W. W. Story:

Here is a wonderful statute [
sic
statue] of “Media,”[
sic
Medea] who in ancient mythology, was a princess famous for her skill in sorcery. She became the wife of Jason, and helped him to obtain the celebrated golden fleece, but was afterwards deserted by him, and in revenge, murdered their two children. The statue represents her as if in meditation before the bloody, and unnatural crime was committed, – holding the dagger in her right hand, the left upraised as if nervous and irresolute, – her head downcast as if in deep thought, her beautiful face expressive of intense anger, and yet doubting whether to gratify her revenge. Her wavy hair is thrown back, and bound in place; her flowing robes fall in the most graceful folds, and the position of the body is singularly easy and natural. Altogether it is a triumph of art, and is the work of W. W. Story, the famous American sculptor, now at Rome.

Miss Edmonia Lewis, the colored artist, has a full length figure in marble, entitled “Cleopatra in Death,” which attracts much attention. The figure is reclining in a royal chair, the body thrown back, and the head resting on one side, as if tired of life. The face has strongly marked features, and wears a wearied, desperate expression. In her right hand she holds the asp, which is writhing in her grasp, but her disgust and weariness of life is so intense, that she is indifferent to its poison and fangs and does not even notice its angry struggles. Her face represents a cruel, sensuous, and restless nature, without any satisfaction in the past, or hope for the future, and determined to cast away the precious boon of life, as if it were a bauble not worth the having, and thus quench the pangs of remorse and disappointment.

But here is a colossal bust that would attract notice anywhere. Shaggy hair and beard, a noble brow, large full eyes, a large well shaped nose, a firm and decided mouth, and an expression of strength and will, that would resist the power of worlds sooner than succumb; it is such a face and head as we might suppose would belong to one of the earth’s noblest heroes. And in the light of history, who shall say it did not, for it belonged to a man, who though misguided in judgment, sacrificed his life for a principle, and was actuated by the most sincere of convictions of duty, – John Brown.
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Most Americans carried little knowledge of art, but they knew what they liked and responded viscerally. Most were taught to sentimentalize mortality and to revere noble suffering. Some preferred the frozen state of other
Cleopatras.

Encountering a simple nude “Venus,” one could simply avert one’s eyes. The imputed death rattle of a bare breasted corpse holding a writhing snake was unique. It produced shock. Speaking the unspeakable, it offered a visual jolt, mesmerizing and erotic to some, gratuitous and repulsive to others. Crowds thronged, according to a California visitor who felt herself “being in the presence of death.”
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“Americans are a queer people,” Edmonia complained.
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“Don’t you think a lady – a rich lady, too – came to me and said ‘Miss Lewis, that is a very beautiful statue, but don’t you think it would have been more proper to drape it? Clothing is necessary to Christian art.”

She responded, “Madame, that is not modesty in you. That is worse than mock modesty. You see and think only of evil not intended. Your mind, Madame, is not as pure, I fear, as my statue.”

A more curious tale concerned a country woman who strayed in and stood in admiring awe for a few minutes. Turning to Edmonia, she asked: “Did you make it from life?”

“Well, no, not exactly, as Cleopatra lived thirty years before Christ,” Edmonia replied.

“O? Is that so! Then I suppose you made it from a photograph!”
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The burned bridges of Oberlin did not deter some of its people from following Edmonia’s rise as they would one of their own. One day, in a swarming sea of faces, it seems a grinning man with a broad-brimmed hat called out, Mary, Mary Lewis.

Anyone calling her Mary had to be from the treacherous past. Consider her reaction. Her stomach surely knotted as she felt herself blush. He must know the shameful history of accusations and dismissal.

His grin widened: Remember me, William Wright
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from Oberlin!

Mr. Wright, storekeeper. He was the father of her teasing classmate, AA Wright,
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and a neighbor of the merchants who made so much trouble for her.

Of course, she remembered him, AA, AA’s buddy, Fred Allen, and much more. She remembered Mrs. Dascomb, the Lady Principal who denied her final classes and graduation. She remembered the hearing. The buzzing. The smirking girls and snickering boys. The fierce brow of old Father Keep and motherly pats of his wife. Treachery followed by violence, merciless and undeserved. The elegant Langston fiercely defending her in court. The goads, the gaffes, and the gossips and eyeballs that rolled and avoided her furious stare. She had missed classes as she recovered from the blows of her night stalkers. Then more accusations – unfounded but deadly to her college degree.

As she made her way to Boston and beyond, she must have feared gossip about the way she was cast out. Yes, she remembered.

Here was Mr. Wright, grinning as if nothing had ever happened.

By all recorded accounts, she never spoke of her trials at Oberlin. She must have put it all behind her lest it trouble her mind and stain her hard won reputation as a dedicated artist. Long before, she could have hoped for an apology, an expression of regret, some acknowledgement of the unfairness she suffered. But the leaders of the town and the college, with their purist theology, ingrown politics, and lofty self-images, were incapable of expressing remorse to a colored girl.

By this time, AA was married and teaching. Mrs. Dascomb retired. Father and Mrs. Keep were dead. Rev. Finney also died, almost one hundred years old.

Mr. Wright told AA about the encounter. AA, in turn, wrote to his wife summering in Saratoga Springs.
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Everyone in Oberlin knew Edmonia was famous. The
Oberlin Review,
identifying her as “the renowned sculptor,” bragged, “Miss Lewis took her first lessons in art at Oberlin about 16 years ago.”
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Never mind her mother who showed her how she made designs for souvenirs.

Edmonia’s old Studio Building neighbor, Edward M. Bannister, entered an oil painting without noting his color.
Under the Oaks
won a bronze medal. When he arrived to claim it, he was ignored. He was as invisible to judges blinded by their beliefs as the humble anti-hero of Ralph Ellison’s famous novel.
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AME Church Bishop Henry McNeal Turner recalled with bitterness, “I grant that one colored man had a painting in the art gallery, but it was not known that it was the work of a negro until it took a first premium and he came to get it and the surprise created a sensation. But the only position other than that, so far as I could learn, filled by a colored person was attending the toilet rooms and bringing water to scrub some of the floors at night.”
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He continued, “The statue of Cleopatra, which Miss Edmonia Lewis, the celebrated colored sculptress had on exhibition there, was brought from Rome, in Italy, and she did not appear in the character of an American colored woman, Therefore, we can claim no credit for the recognition given her.”

Only a magical explanation could be possible. Edmonia was the genie already out of the bottle. Internationally famous, she had proudly asserted her color in interviews and news items for years. Few knew a powerful commissioner had backed her entry.

The Centennial considered painting competitive, but not sculpture. It awarded no prizes in sculpture, only forty-three certificates of artistic excellence.
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Only six Americans received them. One went to Howard Roberts, whose crowd-magnet
Première Pose
depicted a young nude woman, seated modestly with legs crossed and arms half-concealing her face. Another went to Erastus Dow Palmer for his portrayal of a founding father.
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And one to John Rogers for his plaster groups, a forest of which neighbored Edmonia’s smaller works in the Annex. Two other certificate-winners
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can barely be identified today beyond their catalog descriptions. W. W. Story won for “the figure” as a representative of Italy as did Pietro Guarnerio and (remarkably) Michele Buoninsegna of Milan.

That no
Cleopatra
received a certificate might have consoled her. Her
Brown, Sumner,
and
Longfellow
as well as the two Hiawatha groups met the judges’ request for American subjects. However, abolitionist themes frayed the tissue of North-South unity. With the U.S. Army chasing Native Americans on the frontier, her sympathetic portrayal of an arrow maker was a definite no-no. Longfellow may have suffered by association.
Asleep
and
Cleopatra
failed to address the basic standard. And, of course, the admission of Edmonia and her work had already trampled an unwritten rule.

You will recall the
Athenæum,
published in London, England, created a sensation in 1866 when it announced the “Negro Sculptress” to the world. Not surprisingly, given the strong nationalisms of the time, the
Athenæum
critic found little to praise in the arts except the English exhibit and Edmonia Lewis. Signing his review only with initials, he opened with acid slaps at the U. S. section, calling it, “as bad and slovenly as can possibly be imagined.”
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He went on, warming to his theme, “and the Catalogue is inaccurate, incomplete, and consequently worthless, while the quack-medicine advertisements on the reverse of every page or so make it resemble an almanac of that class.” He admired little as he trashed the show. Fortunately, he paused to celebrate our subject, emphasizing her Indian heritage:

There are very few sculptures in the American section, and the only remarkable one is “The Death of Cleopatra.” She is reclining in a chair, is just expiring, and holds the asp in her right hand upon her lap. The other arm has fallen over the side of the chair. The face is slightly, but not unpleasantly, distorted by the agony of death. The pose of the figure is fine, and the statue is in some
respects
the best in the Exhibition. The sculptor is
Edmonia Lewis,
a young woman of Indian descent, who has studied at Rome.

Also based in London, the
Daily News
heaped high praise, hoping the “quiet harmony” of her statue would “find its way in to our Royal Academy” as it predicted a “great future” for the artist.
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Other critics noticed
The Death of Cleopatra
trampled stylistic ideals, although its marble glistened with the customary polish and its subject shimmered with literary reference. J. S. Ingram singled it out for exceptional praise. His note is distinctive in that it did not mention Edmonia’s race:

The most remarkable piece of sculpture in the American section was perhaps that in marble of The Death of Cleopatra by Edmonia Lewis, the sculptress and protégée of Charlotte Cushman. The great queen was seated in a chair, her head drooping over her left shoulder. The face of the figure was really fine in its naturalness and the gracefulness of the lines. The face was full of pain, and for some reason – perhaps to intensify the expression – the classic standard had been departed from, and the features were not even Egyptian in their outline, but of a decidedly Jewish cast. The human heads which ornamented the arms of the chair were obtrusive, and detracted from the dignity which the artist succeeded in gaining in the figure. A canopy of Oriental brightness in color had been placed over the statue.
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