Vinnie Ream
Lavinia Ellen Ream ( born September 25, 1847 in Madison, Wisconsin, † November 20, 1914 in Washington, DC) was a famous American sculptor.
Life
Lavinia Ellen, named Vinnie, was the youngest daughter of three children of German -born surveyor and government employees Robert Lee Ream and his wife Lavinia McDonald, whose ancestors came from Scotland. Even in Wisconsin it was made familiar by Winnebago Indians with painting and drawing. 1856 the family moved to Missouri, where she attended the Girls College Columbia College of Missouri in Columbia. Here their teachers Vinnie recognized artistic talents; she received guitar and harp lessons. Moreover, Vinnie wrote songs and worked on stage with. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, the family moved to Washington and Vinnie found in the mailroom of the Capitol employment. Here she met the sculptor Clark Mills know in 1863 who had his studio in a wing of the Capitol, and sat him model. A short time later, Vinnie began training as a sculptor with him. In the following months, she made along with Mills busts of congressmen and other prominent personalities, including John Sherman, George Armstrong Custer, David Glasgow Farragut, Francis Blair, Thaddeus Stevens and Horace Greeley.
In the second half of the year 1864, President Abraham Lincoln was their model for a bust. The completion of the bust took all of five months since the President was only half an hour per day for the session. Shortly after the completion of Lincoln was the evening of April 14, 1865 by a fanatical supporters of the southern states, the actor John Wilkes Booth, shot while visiting the Ford Theatre in Washington. The next day he succumbed to his head injuries. In the summer of 1866, Congress awarded a $ 10,000 job to make a marble statue of the assassinated president. The contract was awarded to the only 19 - year-old artist, she was the only sculptor who had modeled the President during his lifetime. Critical voices came on the part of the widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, and the journalist Jane Swisshelm, who wrote that Vinnie's success is based only on the use of female lists ( feminine wiles ). The contract was signed on 30 August 1866.
After a scarlet disease Vinnie Ream traveled with her parents to Italy, where she studied at the academy of sculpture under the famous sculptor Luigi Majoli in Carrara. In the quarries of Carrara, she decided on their blocks of marble for the Lincoln statue. The statue was completed in Italy and revealed after the return of the Ream family to the United States, in the presence of President Ulysses S. Grant and numerous other dignitaries on January 25, 1871 in Washington solemnly.
On May 28, 1878 Vinnie Ream married in Washington Lieutenant Richard Leveridge Hoxie, later Brigadier General and Chief of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The festivities also the incumbent President was present. From the joint compound, a son, Richard Jr. went (* 1883), produced. In the following years Vinnie Hoxie rose to the grande dame of Washington society. It was only in 1906, she returned to her studio to work on the statue of Samuel Jordan Kirkwood. Her last work was commissioned by the U.S. state of Oklahoma for a statue Sequoyahs, the creator of the Cherokee writing.
Vinnie Ream Hoxie died on November 20, 1914 of complications from kidney failure with her family and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington. Her husband had a copy of her bronze statue designed by the Greek poet Sappho build as grave stone.
Portraits and Works (selection)
Portrait of Vinnie Ream, oil on canvas, circa 1870
Portrait of Vinnie Ream at the harp, oil on canvas, 1876
Marble statue of President Abraham Lincoln, 1871
Bronze statue of Admiral David Farragut, 1881
Edwin B. Haye, 1906, Washington, D.C.
Trivia
- The City of Vinita, Oklahoma, was founded as Downing Ville in 1871 and later renamed in honor of Vinnie Reams.
- A snack bar in Washington, D.C. Vinnie Ream has a sandwich in the range. Supplements for the sandwich are roast beef, Swiss cheese, onions, mushrooms and mayonnaise.