Edmonia Lewis

Forever Free (1867)

This life-size sculpture depicts a young African American couple at the moment of emancipation. The man is represented standing with his left arm raised, defiantly displaying his broken chain. His left foot rests on the ball connected to the chain. He is bare-chested and his curly hair alludes to his African origin. Kneeling at his side, a woman is joining her hands in prayer. She is fully clothed and her features are much more European. She has long, straight hair.

Originally titled "The Morning of Liberty," this sculpture celebrates the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation that stipulates that "all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." Although female figures in Neoclassical portrayals are often nude or semi-nude, Lewis dresses the woman completely here, and challenges the sexual connotation associated with female slaves. Many scholars have criticized the "whiteness" and the submissive position of the woman, but for Lewis, her figure here is a freed woman performing in her gendered role as defined by 19^th century Victorian values. As art history professor Kirsten P. Buick explains, Lewis's representation of a freed couple falls into the Victorian Cult of Womanhood in which a woman signifies submission, piety, and virtue, while a man enacts the roles of being both protective and triumphant.

The fact that the female figure has no specifically African features has been considered by scholars as a way for Lewis to distance herself from her subjects to give her work more credibility in a white-dominated art world. Buick asserts that the artist did not want her public to read her works as too closely tied to their maker. If they possess more Caucasian features, they are more readily relatable for the intended consumer: a white, wealthy art collector of the Victorian era, already conditioned to expect this stylization through exposure to other, similar Neoclassical statuary.