Vinnie Ream

Vinnie Ream in Washington DC. Photograph by Matthew Brady.

Vinnie (Lavinia) Ream was born in a log cabin in 1847 in Madison, then a small community in the Territory of Wisconsin. Wolves still prowled at night and parts of the swampy Isthmus were completely snake infested. Explosive growth that would make the area unrecognizable to anyone from the pre 1850 era was still a few years away. Vinnie's first exposure to art came from Ho Chunk neighbors who taught her to paint and draw. Her family moved to Washington, DC in 1861. Witnessing sculptor Clark Mills working in his studio, she proclaimed “I could do that if I had some clay”. Still a teen. she became a wildly successful self-taught sculptor and the first woman to win a government commission for a statue. When she was 19 and during the Civil War, President Lincoln sat for her (a half an hour a day for five months) while she sculpted his bust. In spite of Mrs. Lincoln's open disapproval of the young sculptor, the President and Vinnie became fast friends. The successful completion of the bust would eventually lead to her receiving a $5,000 commission and further disapproval from a now widowed Mrs Lincoln for a full length statue of the President...a work that now stands in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Many more commissions would follow and many more great men would become immortalized by her hands and placed in city squares and government buildings. Among her many subjects were General Grant, Admiral David Farragut and….wait for it…..Franz Liszt. Among her greatest admirers was General William Tecumseh Sherman. Their supposed platonic relationship had Washington tongues wagging for decades. It was said of her,"She loved the company of older men of great stature. They in turn loved her charm and fawning attention." Vinnie Ream's final work was a statue of Seqoiah, the creator of the Cherokee alphabet. She died in 1914 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. A statue of Sappho, muse of all artists, adorns her headstone.