26 Facts About William Edmondson

William Edmondson did not know the date of his birth because of a fire that destroyed the family Bible.

William Edmondson was one of six children born to Orange and Jane William Edmondson who had been previously enslaved before they worked as sharecroppers.

The William Edmondson family worked on the plantation and earned 12 dollars a month.

When his father died in late 1889,16-year-old William Edmondson refused to continue to work tirelessly on the plantation and relocated to Nashville.

William Edmondson got a good job working at the expansive new Nashville, Chattanooga and St Louis Railroad shops.

William Edmondson never married and he shared the home with his mother and sister, as well as, occasionally, other siblings, nieces, and nephews.

William Edmondson was buried in Mount Ararat Cemetery, now Greenwood Cemetery, Nashville's oldest black cemetery.

William Edmondson entered the world of sculpture at the advanced age of about 60 years old in 1934.

William Edmondson began his career by working on these tombstones, which he sold or gave to friends and family in the community.

William Edmondson's work was influenced by his Christian faith and his membership in a nearby Primitive Baptist congregation.

William Edmondson's sculptures are straightforward and emphatic forms ranging from one to three feet in height, many sharing his unique religious symbolism.

William Edmondson carved figures of biblical characters, angels, doves, turtles, eagles, rabbits, horses and other real and fanciful creatures.

William Edmondson carved local community icons such as preachers, lawyers and school teachers, celebrities of the day who were important to the African American community, such as prizefighter Jack Johnson.

William Edmondson sculpted a number of popular figures such as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

William Edmondson had a large audience in Edgehill as many of his figures were on display not only in his yard, but in that of neighbors' homes and gardens.

William Edmondson made over a hundred photographs of Edmondson's at work in his backyard shop, which she presented to the editor of Harper's Bazaar.

William Edmondson attempted to publish his work but newspaper chain mogul William Randolph Hearst had a prejudice against showing Negro art as he saw them as nothing other than servants.

William Edmondson then brought Edmondson's work to the attention of fellow Tennessean Thomas Mabry and his boss Alfred Barr, the director of the Museum of Modern Art.

William Edmondson professed to be uninterested in fame, and he appears to have struggled financially during the final years of his life.

William Edmondson is believed to have created about 300 works during his working lifetime.

William Edmondson was given a one-man show of 12 sculptures, the first by an African American artist to be presented by Museum of Modern Art from October 20 to December 1,1937 in a temporary alcove space the Museum had at Rockefeller Center.

In 1938, through MoMA's influence, William Edmondson's sculpture was included in the "Three Centuries of Art in the United States" in Paris.

William Edmondson's sculpture was included in the influential "Two Centuries of Black American Art" exhibition curated by Fisk University Art Department chairman David Driskell in 1976.

In 1981 the new Tennessee State Museum opened with a permanent solo exhibition with six of William Edmondson's sculptures featuring loaned sculptures from Elizabeth Starr's personal collection, and the essays in the accompanying catalog sought to elevate appreciation of William Edmondson's work as fine art.

William Edmondson's art is displayed permanently at the Newark Museum of Art, American Folk Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Montclair Museum in New Jersey.

About a few miles away, some of William Edmondson's tombstones are on display at a local cemetery.