The unlikely friendship between a scandalous aristocrat and the sculptor Edmonia Lewis

Edmonia Lewis around 1870
Henry Rocher. National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian

He was reportedly the wealthiest man on the planet, and his conversion to Catholicism scandalised Victorian Britain. She was an impoverished artist of African American and Indigenous Indian extraction. And in a far-flung corner of the UK this week, their friendship is being remembered as part of Black History Month

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