The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Lewis, Edmonia

LEWIS, Edmonia, American sculptor: b. New York, 4 July 1845. She is of negro and Indian parentage. With slight instruction in sculpture she developed a talent for that art, and came into notice in 1865 through the exhibition of her first known work, a bust of Col. Robert Gould Shaw, in Boston. That year she went to Rome to study, and there she soon afterward established permanent residence. Her works include &lsquo;The Freedwoman&rsquo;; &lsquo;The

Death of Cleopatra&rsquo; (1876), exhibited at the Philadelphia Exposition; &lsquo;The Marriage of Hiawatha&rsquo;; &lsquo;The Old Arrow-Maker and his Daughter&rsquo;; &lsquo;Asleep&rsquo;; &lsquo;Madonna with the Infant Christ,&rsquo; and many portrait busts, among them those of Lincoln, Longfellow, Sumner and John Brown. Most of her work is in Europe.