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• 1 media/SAAM-1994.17_1.jpg 2020-10-14T22:03:00+00:00 Edmonia Lewis’ Death of Cleopatra, 1876 4 by Dane Forsum plain 2020-12-14T04:25:00+00:00
  It is very rare that an artwork illustrating a historical event’s own history becomes almost more notable than what it sought to depict. However, it is in this unprecedented situation that Edmonia Lewis’s, The Death of Cleopatra, 1876 exists. Not only was the work notable in its time for challenging common imagery, standards, and beliefs but so was the artist, and since its completion the work lived its own unbelievable life after going missing for a century. The work was incredibly bold in its portrayal of Cleopatra, which is no surprise given the bravery of its creator. Edmonia Lewis faced many hardships throughout her life, many due to the rampant racism and sexism she faced throughout her life; a trial that was not uncommon for women and people of color at the time. Perhaps one of the greatest injustices to Lewis was how little recognition this truly groundbreaking work received in its time, a direct result of the societal inequalities she was faced with. Edmonia Lewis deserves to be recognized as a pioneering artist in the historically white male dominated art arena, and The Death of Cleopatra is a perfect example of how she challenged this infrastructure which continues to be stand a century and a half later.
              Edmonia Lewis was born to a Native American mother and a Haitian father in 1843. Unfortunately, both of her parents died while she was still very young, and she was instead raised by her mother’s family. With this family she learned to produce traditional crafts such baskets, embroidery, and moccasins.[1] Luckily, her older brother Samuel had found wealth in the California gold rush among other business ventures and was able to support Edmonia’s education which resulted in her attending abolitionist schools and eventually landing her in Oberlin College in Ohio. Oberlin was unique in being the first interracial and coeducational school in the country. Because of this Lewis was able to gain a liberal arts education and was introduced to classical and neoclassical artworks through drawing classes. Her education was cut short however, as she was wrongfully blamed for the poisoning of two of her white roommates at the college. This lie resulted in a mob abducting Lewis and brutally beating her nearly to death. Although she was acquitted in a court trial, she was never received back into the community and was not allowed back into Oberlin, resulting in her not receiving her degree. Soon after this she moved to Boston, where she was able to begin her career as a sculptor, and soon after this she moved to Rome in order to escape the extreme prejudice of the American art world, a move that many other artists of color also made at the time.
              It was in Rome that Lewis began creating The Death of Cleopatra which would eventually become her best-known work. The piece would take her several years to complete, and Lewis would have to journey back to the states several times to sell smaller works in order to pay for it.[2] The piece depicts a life-sized scene of Egyptian ruler Cleopatra moments after her suicide from poison. The work is done in white marble with very few imperfections. The image Lewis gives us of Cleopatra is quite soft, as if it weren’t even made of stone. This is especially true in Cleopatra’s dress, which has the wrinkles and folds of real fabric which drape over her and the arms of her throne. The fabric notably leaves her right breast uncovered, as if she means to breastfeed a child, although none is depicted. The arms of the throne each feature a small sphinx’s head and the back of the seat is adorned with intricate details which appear to be leaves and flowers. The most captivating feature of this work at the time it was presented to audiences at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 was Cleopatras face, which subtly showed the uneasy sadness and torment that she was faced when committing suicide. This deep emotion of the work played a huge factor in its success as many viewers were shocked by the unusual depiction of the Egyptian queen, as it was reported that, “larger crowds [gathered] around [Lewis’s Cleopatra] than any other work in the vast collection,”[3] in the Centennial Exposition.
              What Lewis did by showing the emotional torment of Cleopatra in the sculpture was give her a decisiveness that no male artist had done before. When male artist’s before Lewis handled the subject of Cleopatra’s suicide, they showed her largely without emotion, as if she was simply living out the decisions that had been made for her. They portray her as passive to the events taking place rather than a player herself, a concept prevalent through almost all of art history. For instance, in Jacques-Louis David’s, The Oath of Horatii, 1784, the three brothers from the Horatii family are shown swearing on swords while their wives cry knowing they may die in battle. “Despite the shared domestic setting, men and women embody antithetical concerns, and David indicates no apparent way to span the spatial and psychic distance between them,” writes Erica Rand[4], emphasizing how men are portrayed as the actors and decision makers, while women may only sit and watch from the household. This is the same misjustice that is done unto Cleopatra, who operated one of the largest empires of the time, by failing to depict her as a decision maker in her own suicide. It is perhaps Lewis’s break in this common depiction that truly shocked audiences when it was shown. Most reviews of the piece were positive, with art critiques comparing her works to many classical pieces.
              Yet despite all this positive praise for the work and for Lewis, shortly after its completion the work went missing, and Lewis fell into obscurity, so much so that there were no records of her death or burial.[5] While inside the bubble of the Centennial Exposition audiences were able to look at things removed from their own society as artists from around the world presented new inventions and artworks. While the diversity in both people and ideas were celebrated during this event, “diversity within America remained unwelcomed.”[6] After the exhibition, Lewis was returned into the same world that had beaten her and removed her from her school. In many ways she fell victim to the very system of oppression that she critiqued with The Death of Cleopatra outside the welcoming attendees of the exposition. Audiences weren’t shocked that Cleopatra was depicted as a female making her own decisions just because it was a unique take on the ancient empress, but also because it was a view of women that society refused to allow. After the show, The Death of Cleopatra travelled through many hands, eventually becoming the gravestone for a racehorse. It was here that the statue remained, becoming victim to the elements and vandals as the racetrack’s property was turned into many other things. It wasn’t until 1989 that the sculpture was eventually identified again, and not until 1994 that it found its way into the Smithsonian American Art Museum.[7]
  Lewis fell victim to the very ideas she challenged, and unfortunately was pushed out of the narrative of the art world, so much so that many of her works are completely unknown to us today. Her works were groundbreaking, highlighted by The Death of Cleopatra. Her pioneering spirit into the male led art world deserves to be celebrated today, however she still remains on the outskirts of the main art historical story. Today the statue is highlighted in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s third floor, where visitors are greeted by the statue as soon as they come up the staircase into an exhibit which actually features many of Lewis’s work. Edmonia Lewis’s story is truly tragic but through a continued effort to put her name into the mainstream of art history one we can learn a lot from.
   
   

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  [1] Lisa Farrington, African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 58.

  [2] Alice George, “Sculptor Edmonia Lewis Shattered Gender and Race Expectations in 19th-Century America,” Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Institution, August 22, 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/sculptor-edmonia-lewis-shattered-gender-race-expectations-19th-century-america-180972934/.

  [3] Farrington, 61.

  [4] Erica Rand, “Depoliticizing Women: Female Agency, the French Revolution, and the Art of Boucher and David.” Reclaiming Female Agency, (Los Angeles: University of California Press, Ltd., 2012), 147.

  [5] "Lost and Found: The Strange Case of the Resurrection of Edmonia Lewis' "The Death of Cleopatra"." The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 13 (1996): 33.

  [6] Susanna Gold "THE DEATH OF CLEOPATRA /THE BIRTH OF FREEDOM: EDMONIA LEWIS AT THE NEW WORLD'S FAIR." Biography 35, no. 2 (2012): 322.

  [7] "Lost and Found: The Strange Case of the Resurrection of Edmonia Lewis' "The Death of Cleopatra"." The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 13 (1996): 33.