Vinnie Ream and Lincoln Bust - 1866 Portrait to Video

Vinnie Ream and her Lincoln Bust - 1866 Portrait to Video. Click the two full screen arrows at the upper right corner to have the video automatically loop.

 

Notes: After repeated searches for a stereoscopic portrait of sculptress Vinnie Ream, I had to give up and resort to AI to bring some life to the image. This was an 1866 CDV that I processed through Google AI using the "Photo to Video" app on my Pixel 9 phone. I selected "subtle movement," instead of "I'm feeling lucky." I got a little more motion than I had anticipated.

 

For some background information, below is a summary excerpt from Wikipedia, and then Ream's own account as to how she came to work with President Lincoln during the months before his assassination.

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From Wikipedia: "Lavinia Ellen "Vinnie" Ream Hoxie (September 25, 1847 – November 20, 1914) was an American sculptor. Her most famous work is the statue of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in the United States Capitol rotunda.....

 

In 1861, her family moved to Washington, D.C. After her father's health began to fail, she began working outside the home to support her family. Ream was one of the first women to be employed by the federal government, as a clerk in the dead letter office of the United States Post Office from 1862 to 1866 during the American Civil War. She sang at the E Street Baptist Church, and for the wounded at Washington, D.C. hospitals. She collected materials for the Grand Sanitary Commission.

 

In 1863, James S. Rollins introduced Ream to sculptor Clark Mills. She became an apprentice in Mills's sculpting studio the next year, at the age of seventeen. In 1864, President Lincoln agreed to model for her in the morning for five months, and she created a bust of his figure. During this time, Ream also began intense public relations efforts, selling photographs of herself and soliciting newspaper attention as a marketing strategy.

 

Ream was the youngest artist and first woman to receive a commission as an artist from the U.S. government for a statue. She was awarded the commission for the full-size Carrara marble statue of Lincoln by a vote of Congress on July 28, 1866, when she was 18 years old. She had used her previous bust of Lincoln as her entry into the selection contest for the full-size sculpture. There was significant debate over her selection as the sculptor, however, because of concern over her inexperience and the slanderous accusations that she was a "lobbyist", or a public woman of questionable reputation. She was known for her beauty and her conversational skills, which likely contributed to these accusations. She worked in a studio in Room A of the basement of the Capitol..."

 

Link to photo of Ream's Lincoln statue: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinnie_Ream#/media/File:Abraham_Lin...

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The Congress of Women Held in the Woman's Building: World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., Volume 2, published 1893.

 

Lincoln and Farragut by Vinnie Ream Hoxie

 

"When you so kindly invited me to speak upon myself, my work, and my illustrious subjects, Lincoln and Farragut, you opened to me so wide a field that, even if I did not stray from it, I might wander very far. As for myself, my work was ever, and is now, most fascinating to me. It has never lost any of its charm, and I can not see a block of marble or the modeling clay without a quicker throb of the heart. When the war commenced I was away down south on the Louisiana line, and after its lurid fires lit up the whole country my dear mother, with great difficulty, made her way through the lines and brought her children to Washington. My father, although much of an invalid from rheumatism, was one of the improvised guard around the Capitol, and from its commanding dome, where I had so often climbed to see the rosy sunrise, the "smoke of the battle afar off" was to be seen rising from the Virginia valleys, and the cannonading from "Bull Run" resounded through the air.

 

Time rolled along, the horrors of war developing each day, when a few months before its close, as I was walking along Pennsylvania avenue, I met Major James S. Rollins, of Columbia, Boone County, Mo., who represented that district in Congress, in which I had formerly attended school, saying that he had been looking for me and had promised the president of Christian College to send him a picture of his little pupil Vinnie Ream. He walked with me to our home, and there arranged that my mother and myself should go with him to Clark Mills' studio at the Capitol, where a bust should be made of me to send to Christian College. As soon as I saw the sculptor handle the clay, 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. It attracted the attention of Reverdy Johnson, Thaddeus Stevens, General Morehead and many other of his colleagues, who, learning from him that it was modeled in a few hours by a young girl who had never been in a studio before, generously encouraged me to try again-Senator Nesmith, of Oregon, being my first subject.

 

In rapid succession I modeled likenesses in clay of Senator Yates, Senator Sherman, Senator Voorhees, General Morehead, Parson Brownlow, General Custer, Thaddeus Stevens and the venerable Frank P. Blair. These kind men became my friends, and warmly interested in my progress. As a plant thrives beneath the sunlight, so I throve under their generous influence, and worked early and late that they should not be disappointed in their little protégée. They decided to give me an order for a bust in marble, and I chose President Lincoln for my subject.

 

Senator Nesmith, General Morehead and Reverdy Johnson called upon the President, asking him to sit to me. At first he positively declined, saying he "was tired sitting for his likeness, and he couldn't imagine why any one wanted to make a likeness of such a homely man." Finding him firm in his refusal they arose to leave, Senator Nesmith remarking, "This will be a disappointment to the young artist who selected you as her subject. She is a little western girl, born in Wisconsin. She is poor, and has talent, and we intend to encourage her in this work, in which we feel she will excel, by giving her an order for a bust in marble." Almost before Senator Nesmith had finished, President Lincoln turned abruptly, and in a high key exclaimed: "She is poor, is she? Well, that's nothing against her. Why don't you bring that girl up here? I'll sit to her for my bust;" and so it was, 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.

 

When these gentlemen took me to the White House and presented me to Mr. Lincoln, his kind face lighting up, he exclaimed: "Why, this is the very same little girl who came to me last week and received permission from me to visit her rebel relative at the Old Capitol Prison! Why, we are old friends. Now, let's measure and see which is the tallest; " and it was thus I was welcomed. Sometimes at these sittings his face wore that look of anxiety and pain which will come to one accustomed to grief. At other times he would have that far-away, dreamy look, which seemed to presage the tragic fate awaiting him; and again, those quiet eyes lighting up, a radiance almost Divine would suffuse the sunken cheeks, and the whole face would be illuminated with the impulse of some Divine purpose. Often he would go to the south window and, seated there, remain a long time with his face turned away; then, hastily brushing away the tears from his eyes, he would say, "I was thinking of Willie." He was still suffering from the blow of that child's death, while great affairs convulsed the nation, and he hardly dared to take the time for personal grief.

 

So lately had I seen and known President Lincoln, that I was still under the spell of his kind eyes and genial presence when the terrible blow of his assassination came and shook the civilized world. The terror, the horror, that fell upon the whole community has never been equaled. Terrible as this was, who can say that it was not the best for Lincoln's fame that he died just then, for its measure was full? Yet in the trying years that followed he was sorely needed. Maturing late in life, he was at his best when struck down, and had in his heart and mind great reservoirs of usefulness. His hand of steel and heart of kindness had guided us safely so far through the dark waters, and our ablest mediator, he might, from his gentle, forgiving and humane nature, have evolved plans of peace and reconciliation which would have more quickly, more firmly and more closely bound the estranged ones together…..

 

When, soon after, 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 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. I had approached it with reverence, and with trembling hands had taken the proportions of the figure from the blood-stained garments President Lincoln had worn on that last and fearful night; and Judge Davis, a man whose heart was as great as his stature, was deeply interested in the statue of Lincoln, whose memory he loved. Friends flocked around Judge Davis. He was the lode-star that drew them to my studio.

 

During those years which I spent in the Capitol, modeling the statue, I was thus thrown constantly with men prominent in public life. With Judge Davis as the central figure, many were the brilliant and gifted men who clustered around. Senators McDougall, Trumbull, Yates, Conness, Nesmith, Morton (of Indiana), Proctor Knott, Ebon C. Ingersoll, Samuel J. Randall, Mr. Windom, and indeed almost all of the senators and members were deeply interested in the statue of Lincoln, and were constant visitors at the studio. Friend and foe gathered there with a common interest-the success of the work. Old feuds were forgotten, and they met on neutral ground-some on friendly terms who had not spoken to each other for years. What good friends they were to me! How true! Only for their sympathetic kindness, I would never have had the heart to take up and carry on the work, which was herculean for my fragile shoulders. Time has not dimmed the memory of their kindness, and I lay this tribute of gratitude at their feet….”

 

Done