Hagar

The dual heritage and accomplished marbles of Edmonia Lewis distinguish her as the first major sculptor of African-American and Native American heritage. Following a visit to Lewis's studio in Rome, an anonymous American writer wondered in 1867 if Lewis would create a distinctive if not original style in sculpture precisely because of her background. She indeed represented a fresh approach to the idealism of the neoclassical sculpture tradition, injecting timely yet universal human rights issues and developing a more emotional, naturalistic style than her contemporaries. In 1868 Lewis made her first version of Hagar, also known as Hagar in the Wilderness. After selling the sculpture, she made this second version. The biblical character Hagar was the Egyptian maidservant of Abraham's wife Sarah. After the previously barren Sarah bore her husband a son, the bondswoman Hagar and her son, also fathered by Abraham, were cast out into the desert to escape Sarah's jealousy. In Lewis's interpretation, Hagar's brow is furrowed and her head and hands are uplifted in prayer, but her expression and the meaning of the vase at her feet are difficult to read. Did Lewis, for example, wish to suggest Hagar's despair while searching for water in the desert or her gratitude after finding it?

 
  Although Hagar's features are generalized, Lewis and her audience identified Egyptians with the African continent. The sculpture conveys in ideal form the position of African American women in a white society and expresses Lewis's sympathy for women who have struggled and suffered.

    At the height of her popularity in the late 1860s and 1870s, Lewis captivated both Europeans and Americans active in Rome's community of artistic expatriates. However, just as accounts of Lewis's early years in New York, Ohio, and Boston are sketchy, so too are the activities of her final decades sparingly documented. Today the date and place of her death are still unknown.

(Text from African American Art-19th & 20th-Century Selections, National Museum of American Art)