A look back to 1864, to a woman whose hands left an imprint
on history. Vinnie Ream (1847-1914), had sculpted a bust of Abraham Lincoln,
which took her five months to complete, and it is said he sat for her. After Lincoln's
death, at the age of eighteen, Vinnie was commissioned by the U.S. Government
to sculpt a full figure statue of Lincoln
for the Capitol. She was the first
female and the youngest, to ever be commissioned, and in addition, she was one
of the first women to be employed in the Dead Letter Office of the United
States Postal Service (from 1862-1866).
The Abraham Lincoln statue was unveiled in 1871, when she was twenty-three
years of age. Later she was to sculpt
two more statues, now part of the Statuary Hall Collection: Iowa Governor during the Civil War, Samuel
Kirkwood; and Sequoyah, Cherokee leader.
I took a photograph of the Lincoln statue on a visit
to the Capitol, some years back. I had
no idea at that time the history behind the statue.
She wrote: “Congress appropriated
money to erect a marble statue of the martyred President in the Capitol, it
never occurred to me, with my youth and my inexperience, to compete for that
great honor; but I was induced to place my likeness of him [Lincoln] before the
committee having the matter under consideration, and, together with many other
artists--competitors for this work--I was called before this committee. I shall
never forget the fear that fell upon me, as the chairman (the Hon. John H.
Rice, of Maine, who had a kind heart, but a very stern manner) looked up
through his glasses, from his seat at the head of the table, and questioned and
cross-questioned me until I was so frightened that I could hardly reply to his
questions: "How long had I been studying art?'' and had I ever made a
marble statue?'' My knees trembled and I shook like an aspen, and I had not
enough presence of mind even to tell him that I had made the bust from sittings
from life. Seeing my dire confusion, and not being able to hear my incoherent
replies, he dismissed me with a wave of his hand, and a request to Judge
Marshall, of Illinois, to kindly see the young artist home! Once there, in the
privacy of my own room, I wept bitter tears that I had been such an idiot as to
try to compete with men, and remembering the appearance before that stern
committee as a terrible ordeal before unmerciful judges, I promised myself it
should be my last experience of that kind."
"Judge
then of my surprise and delight when I learned that, guided by the opinion of
Judge David Davis, Senator Trumbull, Marshal Lamon, Sec. O. H. Browning, Judge
Dickey, and many others of President Lincoln's old friends, that I had produced
the most faithful likeness of him, they had awarded the commission to me-the
little western sculptor. The Committee on Mines and Mining tendered me their
room in the Capitol, in which to model my statue, because it was next to the
room of Judge David Davis, and he could come in daily and aid me with his
friendly criticisms. His comfortable chair was kept in readiness. He came
daily, and suggesting ‘a little more here--a little on there--more inclining of
the bended head--more angularity of the long limbs,’ he aided me in my sacred
work by his encouraging words and generous sympathy.”
She
wrote this after the unveiling of the Lincoln
statue in January, 1871: “This night
when the Lincoln
statue was unveiled in the rotunda of the Capitol was the supreme moment of my
life. I had known and loved the man! My country had loved him and cherished his
memory. In tears the people had parted with him. With shouts of joy and acclamations
of affection they had received his image in the marble. Upon the very spot
where a few years before they had gathered in sorrow to gaze upon his lifeless
body lying there in state while a nation mourned, they had gathered again to
unveil his statue. ‘The marble is the resurrection,’ say the old sculptors, and
now the dead had arisen to live forever in the hearts of the people whom he
loved so well.”
Her
work included sculptures of other famous people, President Ulysses S. Grant,
Senator John Sherman, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, Frederick Douglas, but one
I find especially beautiful, is her Sappho, Muse of Poetry, which is at the Smithsonian Museum.
Sappho, Greek Muse of Poetry, Smithsonian Museum
