Mary Edmonia Lewis (ca. 1843–after 1909) was America's first professional sculptor of African and Native American descent. She staked a claim at the highest level of neoclassical art. This usually meant competing against men who vehemently opposed women competing in a “man's” profession. Lewis found the fortitude to take up the challenge and, along with several other women (all white), demonstrated the capacity to produce extraordinary marble sculptures. Lewis's burden was twofold. In addition to her gender, her race presented unique obstacles, especially to those who subscribed to the belief that those with a “drop of African blood” were rendered less intelligent and creatively inept. Her crowning achievement was The Death of Cleopatra (1876) that was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876 to great acclaim. This paper offers critical insights into the creation of that great work.
Robert Seldon Duncanson was America’s first great painter of African descent. His accomplishments placed him in the first rank of nineteenth-century American landscape artists, but his race created challenging societal impediments in the way he pursued his artistic muse—in his social interactions with whites, in the way he produced his art, in the clientele that patronized him, and on deeply personal levels. This chapter demonstrates how Duncanson not only survived as an artist of color living in antebellum times, but also managed to establish a solid reputation as one of America’s finest representatives of the immensely popular Hudson River School of painting. It also helps resolve the longstanding question as to whether Duncanson crossed racial lines to attain success.
This essay is a response to an article recently published by Will South titled "A Missing Question Mark: The Unknown Henry Ossawa Tanner" in the journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. Tanner was the foremost African American artist of the late 19th century. He has emerged as an exemplar of Black achievement in the arts and is now included in the canon of American art of that period. While Tanner labored to remove the equation of race as the defining factor for his artistic output, he never lost sight of his racial identity. South's article suggests otherwise and he reconstructs Tanner as a "tragic mulatto" who, on several occasions, passed as White to advance his career and social standing. South's conclusion seriously jeopardizes Tanner's hardfought reputation and greatly diminishes his celebrated cultural significance. I weigh South's evidence against documented sources and conclude that Tanner unabashedly affirmed his "Blackness" throughout his life and art.
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