Women of distinction/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
EDMONIA LEWIS.
To develop along all the diverging and converging lines that take their beginning in the comprehensive word "education" it becomes necessary for us to sometimes turn aside, as others have done, from the ordinary school-room to the workshop, where we may train the eye and the hand to a skillful use of the implements of industry and thrift; and at the same time broaden and sharpen the intellect in original thought and description by the use of the chisel and the brush.
The Afro-American sculptress is an infallible proof of the possibilities of the race along this line. Think of her as of humble birth, and left a helpless girl without the guiding: counsel and tender care of a mother.
Although without an education, she was determined to make her mark and stamp her impress upon the world. She chanced to get to Boston, and, possibly while looking upon the statue of the great Benjamin Franklin, she became inspired with the thought that some hand had wrought that upon which she was gazing with emotion that stirred her very soul.
She exclaimed, "I too can make a stone man." The liberty-loving William Eloyd Garrison, whose advice she sought, gave her introduction to a Mr. Brockett, a professional sculptor, whose kind and sympathetic heart could appreciate holy ambition even in a poor girl to become a great woman.
He presented to her the pattern of a human foot and some simple materials with which to try her hand, saying, "Go home and make that; if there is anything in you it wnll come out." She tried once and had to "try again," but after all succeeded admirably. Encouraged by this victory, she pushed her way on and on until she has been recognized and honored throughout a large part of the civilized world by those who admire the beauties of the work of an artful hand. Some of her works are "Hagar in the Wilderness," "Madonna with the Infant Christ and Two Adoring Angels," "Forever Free," "Hiawatha's Wooings," "Longfellow, the Poet," "John Brown," "Wendell Phillips." These, with her honored reception in Rome and the attractions which her studio had for the travelers from all parts of the world, all speak in no uncertain tones of her real merits as an artist and sculptress.