MS01.01.03.B02.F10.047

point of view about Native American life and culture. When Henry Tuckerman visited Miss Lewis in Rome he expressed amazement at the ease with which she was able to work, producing the sensistive surfaces in marble that showed personal characture - through portraiture - and a mastery of a medium which seemed ideal in the hands of the artist. Her portraits too were not without meaning when one is searching for the threads of history that associate the artist with Abolitionist Causes. May of the portrait subjects that she carved were of people who had figured promimently in the anti-slavery movement. Her celebrated bust of Abraham Lincoln, housed in San Jose Municipal Libary, is one such work where she idealizes in portrait form the many who issued the Emancipation Proclamation which brought a measure of freedom to an enslaved people.

The Neo-Classic tradition in which most of Edmonia Lewis' work