People, Locations, Episodes

William Edmondson, Sculptor born.

William Edmondson

On this date, we recall the birth of William Edmondson in 1863. He was a Black sculptor and the first black artist to achieve a one-man exhibition in America.

A child of slaves, he was born in the Hillsboro section of Davidson County, next to Nashville, Tennessee. His father died while he and his four brothers and sister were young.

Edmondson's education was minimal, and his early job resume consisted of labor on farms and as an orderly in the Baptist Hospital in Nashville. Everywhere he worked, he was known for his independence and wit.  It was in 1931 that he began working as a stonemason’s helper.  It was here that the sculptor in him emerged.

He forged and ground his own chisels from old railroad spikes, and his hammer's steady ring became a neighborhood sound.  Through the Depression, this slow, lonely work created many animal forms, "critters” as he called them; if anyone remarked about them, he‘d say it was “the Lord’s gift.”

In about 1934, Sidney Hirsch from Vanderbilt University came upon Edmondson and his work. Amazed at its beauty, the pieces were brought to the attention of Alfred and Elizabeth Starr, who knew members of the Museum of Modern Art board.

His exhibit was shown from October to December 1937, and racism dampened its success. The editor of Harper’s Bazaar, attempting to write an article on Edmondson, was stopped by its publisher, William Randolph Hearst, who was prejudiced about black people being shown as anything but servants in his magazine. His hometown also remained racially entrenched and oblivious to his success.

In 1938, his sculpture was included in "Three Centuries of Art in the United States."  Edmondson quit sculpting in 1941. On February 11, 1941, he was honored with a one-man show at the Nashville Art Gallery. Because of ill health, he died on February 7, 1951; later that year, the Nashville Artist Guild posthumously honored him.

Edmondson's pieces were included in other exhibitions: Nashville's Peabody College (1951); New York's Willard Gallery; Cheekwood (Tennessee Botanical Gardens and Fine Arts Center) and Lyzon Galleries in Nashville (1964); City College of New York and the LaJolla Museum of Contemporary Art (1967); Willard Gallery and Newark Museum (1971); and a one-man show at the Montclair Art Museum in 1975. He got his first showing in Nashville in 1941, and it was not until 1951 that the Nashville Artist Guild presented a large exhibit of his work, the year he died.

The June 1981 opening of the Tennessee State Museum featured an exhibition and illustrated catalog of Edmondson's sculptures.

To be an Artist