The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis (34 page)

Figure 38. Portrait of a Woman with a rose in her hair, 1873

This elegant 23 inch high marble portrait of a young woman with a rose in her hair is signed “E. Lewis Roma 1873.” The date suggests Edmonia produced it in the spring, before she left for California. Note the thoughtful expression, soft features, tilt of the head, and the fine lace pattern of her bodice. Photo courtesy: Saint Louis Art Museum. Museum Minority Artists Purchase Fund and partial gift of Thurlow E. Tibbs Jr. 1:1997.

Kind words from Charlotte Cushman and Emma Stebbins might have yielded fruit even after they left Rome. Stebbins’ wealthy brother
[510]
was the head commissioner of Central Park, which had purchased Emma’s colossal
Christopher Columbus
in 1869 and Edmonia’s 1872 bust of Lincoln, the “gift of a woman,”
[511]
in 1873. Edmonia’s price: $1,100. That year the Park dedicated Emma’s bronze
Angel of the Waters
at Bethesda Fountain – creating one of the most popular outdoor art scenes in America.

Edmonia must have been sorely disappointed with
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper
after Greeley imploded. Arriving in New York on the French Line’s
Péreire,
[512]
she headed for Leslie’s new rival, the
New York Daily Graphic.
[513]
She undoubtedly hoped it would print a picture of one of her works, as
Leslie’s
had in 1868.

She would not have known, but the editor was a soft-boiled bigot. He once posed as an abolitionist advocate of racial mixing to stir up trouble for the anti-slavery movement. In this masquerade, he had coined the word “miscegenation” and published a pamphlet to “advocate” its spread in hopes of provoking a backlash.

He pounced on her mixed blood like a cat on a flopping catfish. The glint in his eye surely gave him away.

Trapped, she rose to the challenge. She bragged about excelling in mathematics, she dropped names of celebrities,
[514]
she tried to shock him with the naked wild Indians of her childhood and by fuming at Vinnie Ream. She also inflated her Naples triumph by calling it an “International Exhibition.”

When asked about her plans, she teased. “I intend to make a beautiful statue, as beautiful as I can and send it to the Philadelphia Exposition anonymously. I do this in order that it be judged fairly, and without favor or prejudice.”

The ‘anonymous entry’ gambit was an artful bluff. Her fame had exceeded any hope of a secret entry – and she was as proud of her skin and her blood as she was of her work. Yet she revealed nothing of
The Death of Cleopatra.

She then expressed an ancient code of honor: “If it is a success, so much the better for me, when I claim my work before the world. If it is not a success, I shall bow before the public verdict.”

She also vowed, for the record, to never live in America.

Not well-accepted or understood, living abroad was a reasonable choice for a serious artist of any blood. America’s leading sculptor, Hiram Powers, had just passed away in Florence, having lived there since 1837.
[515]
Story, too, would die in Italy.

To the editor’s patriotism, however, it may have stung – but it was not as personal as the headline, “Miscegen Sculptor,” that eventually crowned the interview. He had likely meant to use it from the moment he met her.

Reprinting the article a few days later, the
Chicago Tribune
renamed it “The Colored Sculptor.”
[516]
The
Fort Wayne Gazette
cherry-picked her talk of Hiram Powers’s digs at Vinnie Ream. The
Brooklyn Eagle
took fresh bits and added from older stories. The
Woman’s Journal
summarized under the title, “Edmonia Lewis,” and the
San Francisco Pacific Appeal
simply reprinted an excerpt from the
Boston Commonwealth
with the title, “Miss Edmonia Lewis.”

The
Graphic
included a portrait of her, a reversed engraving of one of her 1870 photos, probably traced cheaply with the aid of a
camera obscura
(an ancient optical device). In a caption, the editor came back to her mixed blood and repeated her shocking plan to conceal her name and color at the Centennial.

If she had spoken of her new, life-size
John Brown
at the Union League Club, he opted to omit it while drooling over her jibes at Ream’s memorial to Lincoln. He was no fan of John Brown, the Club, or Lincoln.

Frederick Douglass kept a place for Edmonia in his heart. He wished she would bring her art to Washington, DC. A few days after the
New York Times
piece, he reflected, “Edmonia Lewis is very busy at her studio in Rome … instead of lobbying with Congressmen for jobs.”
[517]
This was also a snipe at Ream and her cronies. Perhaps he could shame colored Congressmen into backing government commissions for her. By the time he printed his thoughts, she was well on her way west.

Later that year, he revisited the point as he noted that white celebrities purchased her work: “What she needs, however, is the assistance of her own race ... the favorable mention of colored members of Congress when appropriations for artistic purposes are on foot. She certainly could not execute worse effigies than sundry statues which are supposed to adorn our Capital and Capitol.”
[518]

Unlike Boston, which boasted generations of dour Puritan stock, most adults in San Francisco came from elsewhere. They shared the lure of gold and a common optimism that gave the fast-growing city a fresh spirit all its own. From less than one hundred pioneers in 1844, San Francisco had become the tenth largest U. S. city by population in 1870 (150,000, sixty-three percent as large as Boston at the time, or about the size of Alexandria VA in 2009). Half its inhabitants were foreign-born, largely men from the British Isles, Germany, China, Canada, and France. The largest American-born concentrations hailed from states that had opposed slavery: New York and Massachusetts.

In 1850, thanks in part to the city’s delegates, California joined the Union as a free state. Racially, ninety-one percent of San Franciscans were white. Asians (about eight percent) outnumbered blacks tenfold. Five years after the Civil War, the city accounted for thirty-one percent of all blacks in the state. Like Edmonia’s brother, who headed there in 1852, many of the city’s men and women aspired to productivity, refinement, and citizenship.

San Francisco’s mayor, William Alvord, was born and bred in Albany, NY. Wealthy from importing railroad hardware, he became a patron of the arts.
[519]
He hoped to put his city on the nation’s cultural map. The Bay area was home to a number of artists, but hosting a famous sculptor from Rome twenty-five years after the discovery of gold was almost as important as the new cable cars climbing the Clay Street hill. It meant that the young metropolis was rising above its rough Barbary Coast reputation for gambling, lewd women, and crime.

If New England had tired of Edmonia Lewis, San Francisco was more than glad to receive her. For more than a year before her arrival, one of its main newspapers radiated keen zeal if not good journalism. The
San Francisco Evening Bulletin
started with exaggerated reports of her success (two commissions of $50,000) that echoed across the country.
[520]
The following spring, it announced she planned to marry.
[521]

Two African-American weeklies followed her career more soberly, as part of a larger agenda. One was the
San Francisco Pacific Appeal,
which circulated down the coast. It had reported the sale of
Hagar
in Chicago.
[522]
The other, the
San Francisco Elevator,
had displayed photographs of her Hiawatha groups since 1867. It commented on her work, “[as] strong evidence of the capacity of our race for the higher branches of art, and a refutation of the slanders … of our natural inferiority.”
[523]

In the lobby of the International Hotel,
[524]
she recited her life story. In addition to naming her most famous patrons and plugging her coming show, the
San Francisco Chronicle
asked, “How is it you come to the Far West instead of remaining in New York, as most artists do?”
[525]
She replied:

Well, one reason is that I love to travel. I have Indian blood in me, you know, and I love the grand scenery of the mountains. Why, do you know, I almost envied the freedom of the Indians which I saw on the plains! But then they were so dirty. I didn’t like that in them. Then, another reason for coming here is, that in New York, the artists never thoroughly welcome a brother or sister. They seem to be anxious to get you out of the way, fearing that you will take something from their pockets. Here they are more liberal, and as I want to dispose of some of my works, I thought it best to come West.

The San Francisco Art Association, upon meeting her, provided its gallery free of charge for eight days from Sept. 1.
[526]
As she took ads,
[527]
the
Pacific Appeal
called her “distinguished” and found her “very intelligent.”
[528]
It especially liked “[her] straight forward way and a business-like manner.”

A few days later, a well-prepared
Evening Bulletin
critic asserted, “Her statue of Hagar is acknowledged to be a work of genius, so much so that even those not versed in art are struck with surprise at the soulful expression given to the marble,”
[529]
His report of her memorial to Harriot K. Hunt is unique and historic, with details found nowhere else. He added praise for the
Freed Woman
.

The
San Francisco Daily Morning Call
summarized impressions, “In appearance, Miss Lewis is a vivacious, bright little creature, with quick lustrous eyes, and very agreeable, intellectual features. In conversation, she is animated and engaging.”
[530]

Over one hundred and fifty San Franciscans attended the opening. She showed five pieces, all white marble, none more than two feet high: a bust of
Abraham Lincoln,
the popular
Marriage of Hiawatha,
and three charming images of cherubs:
[531]
Asleep,
which had won a gold medal in Naples the year before, its companion group
Awake,
and
Cupid Caught
– a cute sprite trapped while stealing a rose – that also won a national award in Naples.

The
Chronicle
critic griped there were too few examples, adding, “[with] so much labored finish to them that very little expression is left .…”
[532]
He sniped, “only lovers of art who desire to see the creations of a lady of color, whose education as a
figurista
in marble was obtained in Italy, are likely to derive any pleasure from inspecting her works.” Admitting she had “a certain excellence in the art,” and citing the prizes won in Naples, he felt her work did not match that of Powers and other eminent sculptors.

The editor of the
Elevator
hotly disagreed. The statues, he wrote, “all exhibit originality of conception and of beautiful finish. There are no rough or neglected points ...”
[533]
He particularly praised the realism of the costumes and setting of the
Marriage of Hiawatha.
He also met the comparison with Powers: “Her efforts make a good show. Powers had been nearly 20 years at work before he produced his chef d’oeuvre, the Greek Slave, and that is almost a plagiarism on Canova’s Venus.”

Part of the excitement was unintended. On arriving, she had told the press she would sell all the pieces at private sale or auction. To sink-or-swim Californians, “auction” meant only a forced liquidation – not a race to pay the most money. Having sold nothing toward the end of the show, she realized buyers were waiting for bargains! She promptly posted the “lowest acceptable price” on each piece and went back to the
Bulletin
to clarify the situation.
[534]

Almost at once, she sold the Hiawatha group to the wife of a businessman.
[535]
Then she sold the
Cupid.
Three pieces still lacked homes.

When she learned a group of African Americans planned to honor her with a gathering, she quickly told the
Appeal
she would prefer if they would “take the cost of the proposed reception and purchase the bust of President Lincoln.”
[536]
To her dismay, her fans were more disposed to party than to raise funds for a community purchase.

Fortunately, San Jose, fifty miles to the south, was eagerly promoting a show of over one hundred framed oil paintings to the upwardly mobile residents. Her art, imported from Rome, nicely crowned proceedings that added glitter to horse races and displays of food, furniture, silk, wine, and tools.

She accepted an invitation to take the unsold
Lincoln, Asleep,
and
Awake
to the stylish small city where she rushed to set up her display.
[537]
She dropped the price of the
Lincoln
by $50
[538]
as she showed at the City Market Hall and, the following week, at the Catholic Fair. In a prime location, a space she called her “wigwam,” she charged the same admission she asked in San Francisco ($.50 for adults, $.25 for children, and a $1.00 “season ticket”) and attracted more than 1,600 visitors.
[539]

Surely she would find buyers for
Asleep
and
Awake,
speculated San Francisco’s
Evening Bulletin.
[540]
It continued with an earnest wish that the
Lincoln
be donated to the San Jose public library. San Francisco would have no public library until 1879.