Thompson, S., 2021.

Edmonia Lewis's 'Bust of Christ': A Rediscovery?

In 2015, a marble sculpture was (re)discovered at Mount Stuart, a Gothic Revival mansion on the Isle of Bute off the west coast of Scotland. The work, Bust of Christ (1870), was made by the American artist Edmonia Lewis, a woman of African-American and First Nation (Chippewa) heritage who achieved international recognition as a Neoclassical sculptor in mid-late nineteenth century. In spite of the acclaim she received in her lifetime, with a number of notable exceptions by artists and academics including Maud Sulter, Lubaina Himid, Charmaine Nelson, Molefi Kete Asante, Harry and Albert Henderson and Marilyn Richardson, Lewis?s work is still routinely overlooked, attesting to the pervasive neglect of women artists of colour in art history and curatorial practice. Active between the 1860s and 1890s and based in Rome for the key part of her career, Lewis?s sculptures frequently represented abolitionist themes, depicting black and indigenous figures alongside religious, literary and historical subjects. According to the limited sources available, Bust of Christ was one of two religious sculptures purchased by John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, an extensive patron of the arts, who, like Lewis, was a Catholic convert, and whose father was a known opponent of the slave trade. With the marble bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1872) at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the sculpture is one of only two works by Lewis held in public collections in the UK, though with Night (Two Sleeping Children), also 1870, it is the second rediscovery of a Lewis sculpture in Scotland in the last twenty years. This paper seeks to trace the story of the work?s acquisition, ask why it remained unknown for so long, and propose ways in which its display might raise broader questions around histories of sculpture.