Vinnie Ream: The Natural Sculptress

"Vinnie Ream," circa 1870, by George Peter Alexander Healy. Public Domain

Lavinia “Vinnie” Ellen Ream (1847–1914), named after her mother, was the youngest of three children born to Robert and Lavinia in Madison, Wisconsin. Her father provided for his family as a land surveyor, though his consistently ill health made it difficult to do so. Nonetheless, due to the demands of his job, the family occasionally moved, which was, at the time, no easy venture.

When the family moved to Kansas, Ream attended a local school across the Missouri River in St. Joseph, Missouri. After three years living along the Kansas-Missouri border, the family moved 145 miles east as the crow flies to Columbia, Missouri. It was here from 1857 to 1858 that she attended the all-girls Christian College (now Columbia College) and that her talents in music and art were first noticed. Her painting of Martha Washington still hangs in the St. Clair Hall, the school’s administrative building.

A few years later, with her father looking for work, the family moved to Washington. The country had recently elected Abraham Lincoln and the nation would soon break out into civil war. The family arrived in 1861, and, soon, the nation’s capital was filled with Union soldiers, engineers creating bulwarks, and nervous anxiety. To make matters worse for the family, Robert Ream, despite taking a job as a mapmaker, could only work part-time due to bad health. Vinnie Ream accepted a job at the local post office to help make ends meet.

A Chance Encounter

In spite of the chaos of the war, Ream was somehow met with providence. Maj. James S. Rollins, who was a trustee of Christian College as well as the representative of that Missouri district, bumped into Ream along Pennsylvania Avenue. He had actually been looking for Ream, having promised the college’s president, Joseph Rogers, a photo of his former pupil. Rollins walked Ream home and then convinced her and her mother to attend him on his way to the studio of Clark Mills, located in the Capitol.

Mills had become one of the nation’s most prominent sculptors. He had taught himself the art of sculpting and became well known for his equestrian works, specifically of Generals George Washington and Andrew Jackson on horseback. When Ream stepped inside the studio, it was a moment that would not only change her life, but also the history of American sculpting.

“As soon as I saw the sculptor handle the clay,” she recalled, “I felt at once that I, too, could model and, taking the clay, in a few hours I produced a medallion of an Indian chief’s head, which so pleased the major that he carried it away and placed it on his desk in the House of Representatives.”

A Line of Subjects

American sculptor Vinnie Ream. Public Domain

From that point on, she began working for Mills as his assistant. Furthermore, word quickly spread that the Indian chief’s head had been sculpted “in a few hours by a young girl who had never been in a studio before.” Military and political leaders quickly formed a proverbial line to have their busts sculpted by Ream. Her first subject was Sen. James Nesmith, of Oregon; followed by Sen. Richard Yates, of Illinois; Sen. John Sherman, of Ohio; Gen. Turner Morehead; Gen. George Custer; Rep. Thaddeus Stevens; and one of the founders of the Republican Party, Frank P. Blair.

Her greatest subject, however, was President Abraham Lincoln. It was an opportunity that nearly didn’t happen. Lincoln was not simply weary from the war and the recent death of his young son Willie, but he was also weary of being subject to various forms of artistry, whether photography, painting, or sculpting.

When the idea of sitting for his bust was suggested, Lincoln apparently replied that he “was tired sitting for his likeness, and couldn’t imagine why anyone wanted to make a likeness of such a homely man.” The matter was nearly dropped when Sen. Nesmith informed Lincoln that the artist was a poor young girl from Wisconsin with immense talent. The description of Ream affected Lincoln.

“She is poor, is she? Well, that’s nothing against her,” Lincoln responded. “Why don’t you bring that girl up here? I'll sit to her for my bust.”

The Great Man’s Bust

Vinnie Ream's portrait with the Lincoln bust. Public Domain

As Ream recalled, “The great heart which vanity could not unlock opened with the sympathy that recalled to him his own youth; his battle with poverty; his ambition; his early struggles. So it was that I, a little unknown sculptor, born in Wisconsin, and a stranger to fame, was allowed the privilege of modeling from life the features of this great man.”

Starting in December of 1864, the young 17-year-old sculptress visited Lincoln in the White House for 30 minutes a day, sculpting his bust. Ream remembered the “look of anxiety and pain” on Lincoln’s face, while at other times he possessed a “far-away, dreamy look, which seemed to presage the tragic fate awaiting him.” That tragic fate of assassination in April 1865 would find him shortly before Ream had completed the bust. She finished all the same.

A Historic Commission

In 1866, Congress was set to commission an artist to create a statue of Lincoln that would be placed in the Capitol Rotunda. By this time, Ream’s studio was also, like Mills’s, located in the Capitol. Not yet 20 years old, she was well known among the politically powerful. Her association with Lincoln didn’t hurt. Though Sens. Charles Sumner and Jacob Howard objected, there was actually little objection to Ream being chosen for the $10,000 commission. In fact, a petition supporting Ream as the artist to be chosen was signed by President Andrew Johnson, 31 senators, and more than 100 current and former representatives.

Not only was Ream the first woman to ever receive a federal commission for a work of art, she was also the youngest person to ever receive such a commission. After two years, Ream completed the statue. She then traveled from America’s capital to the capital of Italy. It was in Rome where she brought her piece to be chiseled from Carrara marble. She also studied with other artists while in Rome, and, also, when she visited Paris. Ream returned to America in 1870, and, in January 1871, the Lincoln statue was unveiled in the Capitol Rotunda where it remains to this day.

Vinnie Ream's statue of Abraham Lincoln in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Public Domain

Ream created several other works of art, including a sculpture of Adm. David Farragut in Farragut Square, as well as two pieces that now reside in the capitol: Sequoyah and Samuel Jordan Kirkwood. One of her most famous works, Sappho, was gifted to the Smithsonian American Art Museum by her husband Brig. Gen. Richard Hoxie. A replica of Sappho marks her grave located in Arlington Cemetery.

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