The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis (59 page)

[415]
Pres. Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton.

[416]
Edmund Gibson Ross, who was a subject of John F. Kennedy’s
Profiles in Courage
(1956), remains a controversial figure.

[417]
Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Dec. 25, 1869, Whitney MSS.

[418]
At 45 Via San Basilio, a street intersecting Vicola di San Nicola da Tolentino, Ream’s studio neighbored Stebbins at 11A, Healy around the corner, and Edmonia, Story, etc. on the next street. Ream’s guest book (University of Iowa) recorded some five hundred visitors.

[419]
Whitney to Home, Feb. 12, 1871, Payne MSS, 864-867.

[420]
Karl Voss, who had a studio on Piazza Barberini, also appears in Payne MSS, 847 and 864.

[421]
Cooper,
Vinnie Ream,
113-114; Sherwood,
Labor,
125-129.

[422]
Grace Greenwood, “In re Ream,”
New-York (NY) Tribune,
Jan. 31, 1871, quoted in Sherwood,
Labor,
175.

[423]
Vinnie Ream, diary, around June 7, 1870, quoted in Cooper,
Vinnie Ream,
112.

[424]
New-York (NY) Tribune,
Apr. 3, 1871, quoted in Sherwood,
Labor,
187.

[425]
NYDG, July 10, 1873. Cf.
New York (NY) Sun
interview in San Francisco, excerpted in
Boston (MA) Daily Globe,
Personal, Sept. 9, 1873, in which
Edmonia
repeated what she had been told about Ream; BrDE, Miscellaneous Items, Sept. 30, 1873, summarized with its own cynical twists: “Miss Edmonia Lewis says Vinnie Ream hires Italian sculptors to sculp
[sic]
for her, and that she never has chiselled any thing herself – except Congress. Edmonia is colored, and perhaps her stories are.” See also Harriet Hosmer, quoted in Hanaford,
Women of the Century,
269-270: “I honor all [women] who step boldly forward, and, in spite of ridicule and criticism, pave a broader way for the women of the next generation.”

[426]
Thomas Crawford’s
Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace
(1863).

[427]
Ball,
My Threescore Years,
286. See also Richard P. Wunder,
Hiram Powers, Vermont Sculptor
(Taftsville, Vt: Countryman Press, 1974), 29. Powers had government commissions for full-length portraits of Franklin, Jefferson, Webster, and Calhoun.

[428]
George Peter Alexander Healy,
Vinnie Ream,
1870. Oil on canvas. 31 3/8 x 22 1/2 in.
Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City OK, has a copy of the photo.

NOTES FOR 25. 1870 and CHICAGO

[429]
A-J, Mar. 1870.

[430]
Wreford, “Studios of Rome.” Cf. British Museum
,
Marble bust of Clytie
,
accessed Dec. 11, 2010, http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/gr/m/marble_bust_of_clytie.aspx.

[431]
A-J, Mar. 1870. See also Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis;” J. M. Hutchinson, “Letter from Italy,”
Evangelical Repository and United Presbyterian Review
(Philadelphia
, PA
), Mar., 1870, 576-581
.

[432]
NYT, “The Dusky Race,” Mar. 2, 1869, points to the neighborhood west of Sullivan Street to Wooster Street, between Bleeker and 18th Streets, as home to about 4500 colored people.

[433]
U. S. census, 1870, dated June 24, 1870, and city directories. The building catered to colored professionals. Tenants included a doctor, a druggist, a dentist, and an engineer as well as a porter, a seaman, a hairdresser, and a waiter. Note Edmonia discounted her age by at least one year.

[434]
(Edmonia Lewis),
How Edmonia Lewis Became an Artist
(full text), http://edmonialewis.com/how_edmonia_lewis_became_an_artist.htm

[435]
NYDG, July 10, 1873.

[436]
ChT, Aug. 23, 1870.

[437]
Pickle, On the Wing “Edmonia Lewis—An Episode.”

[438]
Der Frauen-anwalt,
Dec. 1871, 472-473.

[439]
For example, Wolfe,
Edmonia Lewis,
87, reproduced an 1873 SFEl ad that references “our people.” See also Figure 45.

[440]
The
carte de visite
[calling card] was the forerunner of the modern business card. It originally bore only the owner’s name. With the development of albumen printing, the 2.5 x 4 inch photographic card-portrait became inexpensive and fashionable. By 1863, it was “the social currency, ‘the sentimental green-backs’ of civilization,” according to Oliver Wendell Holmes.

[441]
BDET, Art and Artists, Sept. 16, 1878, reprinted by
Newport (RI) Daily News, Atchison (KS) Globe,
DKJ, etc.’
Chicago (IL) Daily Inter-Ocean,
“The Exposition,” Sept. 26, 1878, letter to the editor, Sept. 27, 1878

[442]
ChT, Sept. 25, 1870. The YMCA, which owned Farwell Hall, made it clear they would not benefit from the event.

[443]
Revolution,
Nov. 24, 1870. Col. James H Bowen won the raffle, which brought $3000.

[444]
Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Jan. 14, 1871, Whitney MSS; [Nicholas Francis Cooke], Satan in Society, by a Physician (Cincinnati: Vent, 1871), 354- 355.

[445]
Francis DeCurtis, Chicago History Museum, email May 30, 2008: the Bowen copy of Hagar, except for the hands, was destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The surviving fragment could not be located.

[446]
Revolution,
June 4, 1868.

[447]
Revolution,
June 4, 1869.

[448]
Revolution,
Nov. 24, 1870.

[449]
Abraham Lincoln,
by Henry Kirke Brown.

[450]
Revolution,
Dec. 22, 1870, was followed by notes in WoJ, NYT,
Dubuque (IA) Herald,
LCN, HDH, BrDE, etc.

[451]
Davenport (IA) Daily Gazette,
Personal, Oct. 12, 1872; repeated by SFDEB, ChRec,
Waikato Times
(Hamilton, NZ), NNEra, etc. Yale has no record
of Edmonia’s Longfellow bust
.

[452]
Lillie Buffum Chace Wyman and Arthur Crawford Wyman,
Elizabeth Buffum Chace, 1806-1899: Her Life and its Environment
(Boston: W. B. Clarke, 1914), II, 37-38; Alfred C. Barnes, European travel account. Rare books and manuscripts. Penn State University Libraries. (#2001-0118R/A-S Mss. Book)1, May 5, 1873, p. 2.33-2.34; NYT, May 17, 1873.

[453]
Roger Friedman, librarian, Union League Club of New York, aided the author’s examination of its records, Oct. 23, 1995; See also Roger Friedman, “Where Lies John Brown? Or, What the Escaped Statue Said about the Union League Club,”
Bulletin of the Union League Club,
Feb. 1996.

[454]
NYT, “Club-House Burned; The Union League Rooms Destroyed,” Apr. 26, 1875.

[455]
Sherwood,
Hosmer,
318-319; Regina Soria,
Elihu Vedder
(Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970), 74; Louisa May Alcott, Dec. 29, 1870, in
Selected Letters,
ed. by J. Myerson and D. Shealy (Athens GA, University of Georgia Press, 1995), 153-158.

[456]
Victor Emmanuel II, who had assumed the title King of Italy in 1861, had taken Rome in late 1870 on the date commemorated by Via Venti Settembre.

[457]
Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Mar. 19, 1870, Whitney MSS.

[458]
Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Jan. 14, 1871, Whitney MSS. Cf. HDH, Jan. 18, 1871, reported, “the young colored sculptress and sister of Sammy Lewis,” had returned to Rome. See also Payne MSS 864.

[459]
SIRIS attributes the 36 in. white marble,
Rebecca at the Well,
to Edmonia Lewis. See also
Appletons’ Cyclopedia of American Biography
(1888), III, 702; Craven,
Sculpture,
334. Christopher Busta-Peck, email Mar. 16, 2011, photographed a statue titled “Rebekah,” (marble, 59 in. per data from A. N. Abell Auction, 2001) and dated 1880, in 2007. Cf. Flickr, by Christopher Busta-Peck, Rebekah, accessed July 27, 2011, http://www.flickr.com/photos/cbustapeck/1405348147/in/set-72157602074243366/.

NOTES FOR 26. STANDING OVATIONS – 1871 to 1872

[460]
Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis.”

[461]
The phrase, “first copy,” suggests Edmonia carved more copies.

[462]
This appears to be a misreading of
The Wooing.

[463]
Faithfull,
Three Visits,
293-94; NYT, Sept. 25, 1879;
Boston (MA) Daily Traveller,
Nov. 17, 1880.

[464]
Was the term “stone man” an adaptation of Chippewa or Mohawk language? Richard Rhodes, University of California - Berkeley, Dec. 23, 2010, and Carole Ross, St. Regis Akwesasne Mohawk Tribe, Jan. 11, 2011, say no.

[465]
Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis,” was reprinted with comments NNEra, May 4, 1871, and excerpted or adapted by AtlC,
Janesville (WI) Gazette, Madison Wisconsin State Journal, Little Rock (AR) Morning Republican,
George W. Williams,
History of the Negro Race in America
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1883), II, 450-451; William Wells Brown,
Rising Son
(Boston: A. G. Brown, 1874), 465-468, etc.

[466]
NYDG, July 10, 1873. The prize was also mentioned in BrDE, WoJ, SFC, SFC, SFEl, and NYT.

[467]
Der Frauen-anwalt,
Chronik, Italien, III, No. 2/3, 1872, 111.

NOTES FOR 27. 1872 – WHY CLEOPATRA?

[468]
Lev. 25:10.

[469]
Whitney to Home, June 23, 1867, Payne MSS, 658; Whitney to Home, Feb. 7, 1869, Payne MSS: 758-761. See also Regina Soria,
Elihu Vedder
(Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970), 77; Craven,
Sculpture,
224-225; Tuckerman,
Book,
290; BDET, Nov. 22, 30; Dec. 2-5,11, 16, 1867; AtM, “Sculpture in the United States,” Nov. 1868, 560; NYT, May 17, 1873.

[470]
Hawthorne, Feb. 14, 1858,
Passages.

[471]
James,
William Wetmore Story,
I, 343; Joy F. Kasson,
Marble Queens and Captives. Women in Nineteenth-Century Sculpture
(New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990), 215.

[472]
Hawthorne,
The Marble Faun,
Chap. 14. Cf. J. Hawthorne,
Hawthorne and His Circle,
289-290. “[In 1858] Cleopatra was substantially finished, but Story was unwilling to let her go, and had no end of doubts as to the handling of minor details.”

[473]
Hawthorne,
The Marble Faun,
Chap. 41.

[474]
Adolf Stahr, Winter in Rome, quoted in
Putnam’s Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and National Interests,
vol. 5, Jan.-June 1870, p. 260.  

[475]
William Wetmore Story, “Cleopatra,” in
Graffiti d’Italia
(New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1868), 147-154, dwells on emotion rather than on race. Cf. Nelson,
The Color of Stone,
152-154.

[476]
Child, letter to the editor,
New York (NY) Independent,
Apr. 5, 1866; J. P. Sampson, “Doing the Centennial” (1876). See also BDET, Nov. 11, 1864: “She … undertook to make this likeness of [Col. Shaw] out of grateful feeling ‘for what he had done for her race.’”

[477]
Jarves, “What American Women Are Doing in Sculpture.”

[478]
George Gurney, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Oct. 19, 2007, author visit.

[479]
Plutarch's Lives,
transl. by J. and W. Langhorne (Philadelphia: Hickman and Hazzard, 1822), IV, 137.

[480]
NYT, Dec. 29, 1878: “The brown little thing paused in front of the State house and gazed long and silently at one of Story’s masterpieces. From that day the passion for art and the resolve to execute something like that took possession of the girl.” We could find no record of a statue by Story at the State House.