Thompson, S., 2026.

Jesus in the Lumber Room: Edmonia Lewis's Bust of Christ 1870

In 2015, a marble sculpture by Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907) was 'rediscovered' at Mount Stuart, a neo-Gothic mansion on the Isle of Bute, Scotland. Bust of Christ (1870) had been owned by the Third Marquess of Bute, John Patrick Crichton-Stuart (1847-1900), but shortly after his death the work was put into storage where it remained for over a hundred years. Lewis, an artist of African American and Mississauga/Ojibwe heritage, was based in Rome for much of her career and achieved international acclaim for works such as The Death of Cleopatra (1876) and Forever Free (1867). In spite of huge success in her lifetime, Lewis's works were largely unknown, lost, or forgotten for much of the twentieth century. This essay traces the history of the sculpture's acquisition, considers the relationship between artist and patron, asks why the work remained undiscovered for so long, and how its redisplay in 2021 raises broader questions around histories of sculpture.