Edmonia Lewis
American Sculptor
1845 – 1907 A.D.

Edmonia Lewis, an American sculptor, born in New York, of negro and Indian parentage. She received little instruction, but attracted attention by exhibiting a bust of Colonel Shaw at Boston in 1865. Later she went to Rome to study, and after 1867 she made her residence there.

Among her famous works, which show talent and imagination, are The Freedwoman, Dying Cleopatra, Asleep, Marriage of Hiawatha, and Madonna with the Infant Christ. Among her portrait busts in terra cotta are those of Longfellow, Charles Sumner, John Brown, and Abraham Lincoln.

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Reference: Famous Women; An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women By Joseph Adelman. Copyright, 1926 by Ellis M. Lonow Company.