The Color
of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject
in Nineteenth-Century America
by Charmaine
A. Nelson
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
MN, 2007
320 pp., illus. 40 halftones. Trade, $82.50;
paper, $27.50
ISBN: 0 0-8166-4650-3; ISBN: 0-8166-4651-1.
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University
mosher@svsu.edu
Evidently there exists little biographical
information on nineteenth century sculptor
Edmonia Lewis. Charmaine A. Nelson, of
McGill University in Montreal, used this
to her advantage. The scholar let her
search for data bring forth a broader
examination of the politics of nineteenth-century
neoclassical sculpture, its aesthetics
of gender and beauty, and its racial discourse.
These are spiced by the judgments and
gossip within an energetic collectionI
hesitate to say "community",
for it seems to have worked to exclude
Lewisof fellow artists.
Nelson examines the context of Lewis,
a female American sculptor in Paris, and
her added burdens as a Black and Native
American one. Racist reservations about
her competence were expressed in letters
by her contemporaries. Nelson taps these
peer reactions to surmise the artistic
strategies Lewis used to keep her career
intact.
The sculptor looks out from a single photograph
in the book, a studio portrait (perhaps
by Nadar?) from about 1870 that now resides
in the National Portrait Gallery. In modest
urban dress, her curly hair frames her
poised and peaceful face beneath her small
hat, as she wears a somewhat plain long
dress (not the satins of Ingres' wealthy
sitters), and a velvet shawl.
There was a colony of American artists
in Rome, and one of the most successful
was the independently wealthy William
Wetmore Story. Female artists practicing
in Rome, like Anne Whitney or Charlotte
Cushman and her companion Emma Stebbins,
were sneered at as "Lady-Artists". Harriet
Hosmer commanded a group of Italian artisan
stonecutters who actually completed commissioned
pieces for her. Most of the artists
studios hosted many visitors, who included
writers Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe and
Henry James. Lewis white peers like
Hosmer are described in letters and accounts
by Hawthorne and James.
Edmonia Lewis distinguished herself to
her stateside patrons with a memorial
sculpture of the Bostonian Robert Gould
Shaw, commander of a regiment of African
American soldiers in the Civil War. Living
in Rome on limited funds, Lewis spent
money for expensive music and riding lessons,
in part to be better conversant with her
patrons and their interests. Her wavering
patrons and supporters like Lydia Maria
Child, a white female social reformer
and abolitionist belittled Lewis in letters
and patronizing comments behind her back.
Anne Whitney snidely claimed Lewis' success
was due to committed "friends of the race",
rather than the artist's own talent, a
resentment against successful nonwhite
people that we hear voiced by grumblers
today.
Since Napoleans Egyptian campaign,
neoclassicism was exoticizing orientalism
as well. Jean-Léon Gérome
painted detailed slave markets and harems,
and Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres painted
his bountiful nude women of the seraglio.
Meanwhile, images of captivity were popular,
the shackles sometimes encircling coy
and voluptuous female nudes; in the United
States, this genre included Hiram Powers'
1843 "Greek Slave". Erastus Dow Palmer's
"White Captive" appealed to a nation still
immersed in narratives of Indian captives,
tales used to justify brutality towards
the Indians. When sculptors depicted manumission
of Africans in America, abolitionist patrons
generally preferred the grateful ex-slaves
shown in a submissive position. There
was also a genre of paintings and sculptures
that showed mixed-race slave children
who were fathered by their white owners.
Examining racialized bodies, sculptures
of Cleopatra by William Wetmore Story
and Edmonia Lewis are compared and contrasted.
When Anne Whitney sculpted an allegory
of Africa, she de-Africanized the facial
features as it progressed. Whitney cut
down the ruler of the Niles full
nose and lips to leave at the end a rathered
mouse-nosed and mealy-mouth queen.
The author questions the very nature of
unblemished smooth white stone itself.
In contrast to the cool white marble expected
for most classical works, some artists
used colored stone for different skin
hues. The sculptures of Charles-Henri-Joseph
Cordier, like "African in Algerian Costume",
sensitively depict people of color in
dark marble. Yet in concept these works
strive to be "typical" of racial types,
rather than portraits of individuals,
which Nelson finds as distancing as the
eras prevailing conventions of classicism.
In discussing the Black, Native and female
identity with tools of contemporary theory,
Nelson calls upon slave narratives and
rude cartoons showing uppity slaves and
free Blacks; reminders of the terrors
of slavery and indignities of casually-accepted
racism. Seeking Edmonia Lewis, the author
traverses neoclassicism, politics, gender,
and race. Still, the comparatively privileged
artists careerist sniping (some
things never change) make for an entertaining
read. When a Hollywood movie is made of
Edmonia Lewis' working life and struggle
in Romes bubbling, competitive art
world, Charmaine A. Nelson's valuable
book will further be a resource. Whos
optioned the film rights?