Alonzo Victor Lewis, painter and sculptor, was born in Logan, Utah, in 1886, the son of Marion Lewis and Carol Phister. Alonzo was interested in art from an early age, and at 15, left home and found work with Western painter Edgar Paxson in Montana. Paxson mostly painted vibrant Western scenes, with his subjects being mountain landscapes and the Indian tribes of Montana. Perhaps Paxson’s most famous work is a chaotic and ferocious depiction of the Battle of Little Bighorn. ((Paxson’s painting of the Little Bighorn was reported to have moved both Custer’s widow, Elizabeth, and General Edward Godfrey, a friend of Custer’s to tears, as it so accurately captured the fury and violence of the battle. It currently is on display at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming.)) The raw realism of Paxson’s art seems to have influenced Lewis, and some of those same elements appear in Lewis’s later work. After a short time, Lewis found financing that allowed him to attend the Chicago Academy of Art (now the Art Institute of Chicago), and after graduation toured Cuba and Mexico, before moving to Spokane, Washington to begin his own career.

.

Alonzo Lewis in the 1930s at work in his studio, courtesy of the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle.
.

Lewis tried his hand at painting, but like many artists, found it difficult to support himself financially. He appears to have struggled with money his entire career. His personal papers show that he fled from Spokane, leaving behind unpaid bills and unsold paintings that he tried in vain to reclaim from a dealer. ((Even during his times of greatest accomplishment, Lewis struggled financially. He had to abandon one bronze foundry who would no longer work with him for his unpaid bills, and work with another in Brooklyn, New York, who seemed to be more willing to deal with the delayed payments. One creditor even wrote him, “The writer is not sure what the unpardonable sin is, but he has an idea that it is a disposition to evade payment of small bills. Now, if this assumption is correct in this connection, it looks as if things will go very badly with you.”)) During this time, he met and married Bessie Juanita Magee, who was not an LDS church member, and moved to Oregon for a short time where his younger brother Warren was having similar financial problems as a businessman and promoter of stage plays and concerts.

Sensing greater opportunities, Lewis and his wife moved to Seattle, where he finally began to work in bronze castings, the medium for which he is most remembered. He continued to do a little painting, but soon found that wealthy people were interested in having bronze busts made of family members who died. Lewis created a number of these bronze busts, usually working from a plaster death mask taken from the deceased.

It was during this time as Lewis was trying to establish himself, that he also dabbled in poetry. He is not a great (or perhaps even good) poet, and I have not found that any of them were ever published, or even submitted for publication anywhere. But they are there in his collected papers, usually written in small pocket notebooks, with the pages hand numbered and torn from the binding. It was one of these longer poems that first caught my eye, full of interesting images and directly related to the creation of a death mask for a bronze bust of a man simply identified as Jacob. Here is that poem, below. In this as in some of his other writings, Lewis seems somewhat obsessed with death, and with questions about the nature of life after death. Given his Mormon upbringing, this poem is particularly interesting. [Note: one page of the poem, #15, was missing from his papers, and is not included.]

Jacob or The Purple Casket

1 There in the chapel death is still’d.
Here a mortal remains destiny will’d.
Red roses cover his purple bier
And their fragrance pure made heaven near.

2 In reverence deep I bowed my head
While in the presence of the dead.
The scent of flowers to me came
To fill my soul, not God to blame.

3 Mine was a mission quite apart
From a loved one’s pain or anguished heart.
Not there to mourn, not to sigh
Nor doubt God’s cause, nor wonder why.

4 There was I to mask his features clear
As Jacob lay in his purple bier.
At his face my gaze is cast,
A spirit gone from earth at last.

5 Into my arms his body lift,
Once of earth, now heaven’s gift.
And O! The cold material thing
When man’s great soul has taken wing.

6 I ask it now, I ask it now
Of man—of God! Tell me how
When this strong tongue refuse to speak,
Of what assurance have the weak?

7 Great Jehovah, God of man,
Must I doubt the spoken plan?
When the bells of heaven toll,
What becomes of Jacob’s soul?

8 Once in this form now so still;
The blood of life its veins did fill.
Then like the ocean’s ebb and flow
To spirit-lands from earth did go.

9 Then flow not blood of mortal remains,
What this earth loses, tis heaven’s gains,
For spirit pure is all worth while,
The earthly turns, the earth defile.

10 O Jacob! Jacob speak to me,
In another world will I meet thee?
Or is this all — an end to all
The last faint sound an echoing call?

11 Open wide your far dim’d eyes for me
That I with quivering hope may see
The biding place of thy great soul
Of after hopes which Gods extol.

12 O move thy silent lips once more
Thou on the threshold of heaven’s door;
And with those dim’d eyes looking there
Tell me how the weak will fare.

13 Breathe again your breath of strife.
O God return this soul to life.
Breath, o breath, I ask of thee
So I may know — perplexes me.

14 Come, move thy arms in this silk shay
And prove to me thy worthless clay.
Jacob — Jacob are you here?
Thy silence palling gives me fear.

15 [Missing]

16 O man of God, I in despair
See your silenced once dark hair.
As gold will tinge an autumn leaf
So age will come, with death, and grief.

17 O speak speak! Move or breathe.
Not your say for man to grieve.
For what God does is done
And life so added taken one by one?

18 Find not fault with heaven’s plan
For God is watching over man.
Doubting ones of earth’s great sphere
In thy good deeds is heaven near.

19 So muster up thy courage brave
And think not of a sullen grave
But let thy worthy acts with men so be
That they shall live for eternity.

20 Back into his casket lay
I the body — Jacob’s clay.
Smooth the brow, brushed the hair,
Prepared to pour wet plaster there.

21 With oil like Christ anointed dead,
Is sweet oil rubbed on Jacob’s (face and) head
And as his features clear this liquid wets,
The mould is made, the plaster sets.

22 Men who struggle here on earth,
As this man Jacob by his worth
Show their lives and deeds upon their face,
A record death can not efface.

23 I take the mould, I leave that room;
The silent house has cast its gloom.
For only the still voice of the dead
Could say to me what Jacob said.

24 The bloom of fragrant flower ne’er cease
And Jacob’s ashes rest in peace.
While night comes on there’s yet a day
And sunshine casts my gloom away.

25 The dead are gone but for a while
And sunshine gives the heart a smile.
The mask now done will have a way
Affirming what the dead would say.

26 Mask:
“Jacob thou wert benevolent, thou wert kind.
Thou wert a man of noble mind.
The light of heaven’s on thy brow
And good earth glorifies thee now.”

27 “In thy closed eyes the faithful light
Which through adversity hast led thee right,
Shines out like stars of evening hour.
A kindly flame from heaven’s bow’r.”

Later, I will post more about Lewis’s work, including a controversial statue of a returning soldier from World War I, a giant 12 foot plaster head of Abraham Lincoln, and how, despite his efforts to distance himself from the LDS church, it seemed never to quite forget him.

(Note: This post has been a magnet for spam, so I have turned off comments. To contact the post author or to leave a comment, please email AEParshall@aol.com.)