The Color of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject in Nineteenth-Century America

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In The Color of Stone, Charmaine A. Nelson brilliantly analyzes a key aspect of neoclassical sculpture color. Considering three major works, Hiram Powers's Greek Slave, William Wetmore Story's Cleopatra, and Edmonia Lewis's Death of Cleopatra, she explores the intersection of race, sex, and class to reveal the meanings each work holds in terms of colonial histories of visual representation as well as issues of artistic production, identity, and subjectivity. She also juxtaposes these sculptures with other types of art to scrutinize prevalent racial discourses and to examine how the black female subject was made visible in high art.