Artists had always depicted Cleopatra sighing with existential fatalism, the deadly asp nearby. They showed her contemplating death; they didn’t show her actually dead. Edmonia Lewis’ Cleopatra—disheveled, collapsed against her throne—was a tremendous scandal. Lewis labored on the work for four years in her Rome studio and shipped it for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The artist William J. Clark lambasted, “The effects of death are represented with such skill as to be absolutely repellent—and it is a question whether a statue of the ghastly characteristics of this one does not overstep the bounds of legitimate art.” Crowds flocked to see it.

Lewis was born in 1844 and began her education at Oberlin College during the Civil War. She decamped for Rome, telling The New York Times, “I was practically driven to Rome, to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.”

No buyer emerged for The Death of Cleopatra in Philadelphia. Lewis returned to Europe and the three-ton sculpture began a wild life, decorating a Chicago saloon, then purchased by a gambler, "Blind John" Condon, to mark the grave of a racehorse of the same name. A century later, Cleopatra was located, badly damaged, in a storage facility. She underwent extensive restoration and entered the Smithsonian Institution collection in 1994. Lewis died impoverished in London in 1907, her grave only recently rediscovered. Artist and sculpture alike, rescued from obscurity.

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Links:

• “SEEKING EQUALITY ABROAD.; WHY MISS EDMONIA LEWIS, THE COLORED SCULPTOR, RETURNS TO ROME--HER EARLY LIFE AND STRUGGLES.” – The New York Times, December 29, 1878

  
  

• “Sculptor Edmonia Lewis Shattered Gender and Race Expectations in 19th-Century America” - Alice George, Smithsonian Magazine, August 22, 2019

  
  

• Mary Edmonia Lewis​, The Death of Cleopatra – Historical Association of Forest Park

  
  

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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