1876
The Death of Cleopatra
This work is considered to be Lewis' masterpiece. Carved in 1876, this massive, two-ton sculpture represents Cleopatra at the moment of her death. The legendary, exotic Egyptian queen committed suicide to avoid being taken as prisoner after the defeat of her armies in a decisive battle with Octavian, who became Augustus Caesar, first leader of the Imperial age of Rome. Her method of suicide was to allow an extremely poisonous asp to bite her. Lewis adorns Cleopatra in her usual attributes of crown, necklace and bracelets, but dresses her in a more or less Neoclassical garment, which alternately drapes her shoulder and waist and uncovers one breast. The throne appears to have been finely sculpted with many details on the back side. Two identical pharaonic heads decorate the arms of the chair.
This sculpture is unusual in the canon of Neoclassical portrayals of Cleopatra, as it somewhat inelegantly emphasizes the queen slumped in death. Slouched in her throne, her head thrown back, and still holding the snake in her right hand, Cleopatra's position is highly dramatic. Her face - lacking any Africanized features which would have pointed to the current, progressive acceptance of being Egyptian as also being Black - remains passive, however.
This monumental sculpture was praised by contemporary critics for its daring expressivity. It commanded a great deal of attention in its debut for the American public, deemed the 'most important sculpture in the American section' in the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. It was given pride of place, located in the highly desirable rotunda exhibition space. Despite Black Americans' intentions to have heightened national visibility in this exposition, Lewis was one of only two African American artists to be ultimately included. Her treatment of a subject that was already popular among Neoclassical sculptors remains unique, and is the subject of much scholarly focus.
Depictions of Cleopatra in death more commonly depicted her romanticized demise while surrounded by African slaves. Lewis portrays the queen alone in her actions immediately preceding her death. For visual source material, Lewis may have relied upon coins struck during the queen's reign, (undoubtedly visible in Roman collections), which depicted Cleopatra with a straight, narrow-nosed profile. This may have been due to the queen's historically accepted but ultimately unproven partial ancestry as Greek or Roman.
Abolitionists in the 19th century championed Egypt as Black Africa and imbued Cleopatra with "evidence of African accomplishment and capability of leadership," as Susanna W. Gold writes. Driven by an inner vision, Lewis' work in this perspective slightly differs from the abolitionists' vision, in that her Cleopatra - as she became a center point of the Centennial Exposition of 1876 - may instead be a kind of personification of Emancipation and its immediate aftereffects, which were for Black Americans rapidly proving to be dismal.
Alternately, Cleopatra was a complex figure who could also be seen as a power-mad, sexually controlling Black woman. According to Kristen Buick, by distancing the Queen from established conventions and suggesting a less ethnic identity, Lewis may have wished to separate all black women from this unusual conception of the Queen. The abundance of details, the exposure of the body and the unique face force the viewer to consider the figure as Cleopatra only. Lewis' forces the viewer to confront the death of a singular figure removed from us in history, and so she cannot be used as an allegory or a self-portrait. This strategy enabled Lewis to keep her identity as a women artist of mixed race separate from the queen historically framed as a woman of ethnicity.
For several years, Lewis' sculpture of Cleopatra literally disappeared from view as an important work by an American woman artist of color. Unsold after the Exposition, it was placed in storage. It was later sold to a gambler who elected to use the sculpture as a centerpiece in a large burial monument for a prized racehorse named Cleopatra, placed in the grandstand of Chicago's Forest Park racetrack. It eventually wound up outdoors in a construction storage yard elsewhere in Chicago. The sculpture remained unprotected from the elements for a long time. A local Boy Scout troop attempted to 'improve' the sculpture by painting it. In 1985, a local dentist purchased the work and stored it in the Forest Park Mall. Once the dentist contacted the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a specialist on the career and work of Edmonia Lewis was notified, the sculpture was finally properly recognized and donated to the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in 1994.
In a number of ways, the interpretation and object history of this seminal work parallels the story of an extremely unusual artist of 19th century America.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
