Child of the fire

"Child of the Fire is the first book-length examination of the career of the nineteenth-century artist Mary Edmonia Lewis, best known for her sculptures inspired by historical and biblical themes. Throughout this richly illustrated study, Kirsten Pai Buick investigates how Lewis and her work were perceived, and their meanings manipulated, by others and the sculptor herself. She argues against the racialist art discourse that has long cast Lewis' sculptures as reflections of her identity as an African American and Native American woman who lived most of her life abroad. Instead, by seeking to reveal Lewis' intentions through analyses of her career and artwork, Buick illuminates Lewis' fraught but active participation in the creation of a distinct 'American' national art, one dominated by themes of indigeneity, sentimentality, gender, and race"--Publisher description.