The Death of Cleopatra,

carved in white marble, depicts Egypt’s most famous queen in the moments after her suicide. Two sphinx heads flank the queen, representing her twin sons. “Lewis took a bold approach in depicting the ancient queen deceased, and some critics were revolted,” says Karen Lemmey, the Lucy S. Rhame curator of sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Indeed, though one of her fellow artists, William J. Clark, considered Lewis a sculptor of “genuine endowments,” he responded to Cleopatra with something close to disgust: “The effects of death are represented with such skill as to be absolutely repellent—and it is a question whether a statue of the ghastly characteristics of this one does not overstep the bounds of legitimate art,” he wrote in 1878. Still, according to the People’s Advocate, a Black weekly, the public was enthralled: “The statue excites more admiration and gathers larger crowds around it than any other work of art in the vast collection of Memorial Hall.”

After the centennial, Lewis returned to Rome and spent the rest of her life in Europe. As the neo-Classical style fell out of fashion, Lewis slipped into obscurity. Not until 2011 did the biographer Marilyn Richardson confirm, via census and medical records, that Lewis died in London in 1907.

For nearly a century, The Death of Cleopatra was lost, like much of Lewis’ other work. It served for a time as décor in a Chicago saloon; a racehorse owner bought it to mark the grave of a favorite steed. In the late 1970s, it was found in a Chicago storage yard. The Historical Society of Forest Park oversaw restoration, removed graffiti and replaced the missing chin and nose. The society gave Cleopatra to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1994.

Lewis never saw the recognition she deserved, but her legacy is enjoying a renewed interest: Besides groundbreaking research being conducted by Richardson and others, the U.S. Postal Service released a stamp honoring the artist in January, ensuring that Lewis, who exhibited so widely in Europe, finally gets the coast-to-coast American tour she deserves.