Edmonia Lewis Carved Her Legacy

Part of the mission of the Black Heritage® stamp series is to celebrate African American achievement — particularly to acknowledge those whose recognition has been too long delayed.

American sculptor Edmonia Lewis (ca. 1844–1907) is one such honoree.

Lewis was the first African American and Native American sculptor to earn international acclaim. Born in Greenbush, New York, she spent most of her career overseas in Rome, where her studio became a must-see attraction for American tourists.

In addition to portrait busts of prominent people, Lewis’s work incorporated African American themes, including the celebration of newly won freedoms, and sensitively depicted her Native American heritage as peaceful and dignified. A Roman Catholic, she also received several religious commissions.

Lewis celebrated emancipation with the marble sculpture “Forever Free,” which repudiated a familiar image of the time — Abraham Lincoln bestowing freedom upon the enslaved — by focusing instead on two figures celebrating their release.

In her sculpture of the biblical figure Hagar, Lewis portrays an outcast servant wandering in the wilderness. Through this work, she dramatized the suffering of enslaved African American women and the courage of descendants of the African diaspora.

Lewis sought artistic and personal expression even when its pursuit took her overseas, but her heritage was always present in her creative vision and the work she shaped with her hands.