Edmonia lewis sculptures for sale
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What follows is a short biographical essay on Edmonia Lewis’s life, meant as a synthesis of the archival research that others have done, but also as a way of showing how she fits more broadly into “history” (You can follow this link to skip directly to the endof the essay for resources that give you more–or, if you wish, less!–information about her life.)
Edmonia Lewis’s story has sometimes frustrated her biographers—it has such a murky beginning and ending that you could say it consists only of a middle. There are very few personal documents and only a handful of photographs, since she died virtually forgotten. Most of what we know about her relates to the height of her career, to the late the 1860s and the 1870s, with a bit more information still emerging about the 1880s and 1890s. But one thing is sure: no one can tell her story without addressing the history of race and racism in America, and the way in which it shaped the way she was seen during her years in the spotlight, as the single dot in a Venn diagram of unlikely artist profile: t
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Edmonia Lewis
(1844-1907)
Who Was Edmonia Lewis?
Edmonia Lewis' first notable commercial success was a bust of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. The money she earned selling copies of the bust allowed her to sail to Rome, Italy, where she mastered working in marble. She quickly achieved success as a sculptor. The circumstances of her death in 1907 are unclear.
Early Years
Hailed as the first professional African American and Native American sculptor, Lewis had little training but overcame numerous obstacles to become a respected artist.
Elusive when it came to personal details, Lewis claimed different years of birth throughout out her life, but research seems to indicate she was born around 1844 in upstate New York. The daughter of a Black father and part-Ojibwa mother, she was orphaned at an early age and, as she later claimed, was raised by some of her mother's relatives.
With the support and encouragement of a successful older brother, Lewis attended Oberlin College in Ohio where she emerged as a talented artist. The abolitionist movement was active on the Oberlin campus an
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Facing racial and gender discrimination, Edmonia Lewis overcame several barriers to achieve international recognition and acclaim as a sculptor.1 While her unique background often attracted as much interest as her works of art, Lewis managed to carve out her own identity as an artist. Her success paved the way for artists of color and proved that artistic genius did not belong exclusively to the White race.
While many accounts of Lewis’s early life exist, specific details remain inconsistent. Believed to have been born in 1844 to an African American father and Chippewa mother, she grew up in Greenbush, New York.2 Both parents died early in her life, leaving her to live with her aunts. With financial aid from her brother, Lewis left New York to pursue a higher education. In 1859, she arrived at Oberlin College, a school known for its liberal and abolitionist views. There, she studied art until serious allegations threatened her life.3 Accused of poisoning two schoolmates, a mob attacked her and left her badly beaten. Lewis’s lawyer, John Mercer Langston, convinced authoritie
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