We are looking at Emonia Lewis born in 1844 in Greenbush, New York. Lewis had her first success with a bust she sculpture of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. The money she got by selling copies of the bust was her fair on a ship that sailed to Rome Italy.
Quickly Lewis achieved success as a sculptor. The daughter of a black father and part-Ojibwa mother, she was orphaned at an early age but later was taken in by relatives.
With the support and encouragement of a successful older brother in Boston.
Lewis befriended abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and sculptor Edward A. Brackett. It was Brackett who taught Lewis sculpture and helped propel her to set up her own studio.
In Italy.
Lewis continued to work as an artist. Her work over the next several decades moved between African-American themes to subjects influenced by her devout Catholicism.
One of her most prized works was "Forever Free" (1867), a sculpture depicting a black man and woman emerging from the bonds of slavery.
Another piece,
"The Arrow Maker" (1866), draws on her Native-American roots and shows a father teaching his young daughter how to make an arrow.
https://www.biography.com/people/edmonia-lewis-9381053
Indians fighting
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1869-71
Quickly Lewis achieved success as a sculptor. The daughter of a black father and part-Ojibwa mother, she was orphaned at an early age but later was taken in by relatives.
With the support and encouragement of a successful older brother in Boston.
Lewis befriended abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and sculptor Edward A. Brackett. It was Brackett who taught Lewis sculpture and helped propel her to set up her own studio.
In Italy.
Lewis continued to work as an artist. Her work over the next several decades moved between African-American themes to subjects influenced by her devout Catholicism.
One of her most prized works was "Forever Free" (1867), a sculpture depicting a black man and woman emerging from the bonds of slavery.
Another piece,
"The Arrow Maker" (1866), draws on her Native-American roots and shows a father teaching his young daughter how to make an arrow.
https://www.biography.com/people/edmonia-lewis-9381053
Indians fighting
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1869-71
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