I’ve been remiss in introducing you to sufficient numbers of fine dead ladies, so here’s my first effort at rectifying the situation:
Vinnie Ream
First of all, she has a fantastic name. That’s the name she went by, although her full legal name was Lavinia Ellen Ream Hoxie, which is a neat name in itself.
Anyway, Ms. Ream was a very talented sculptor. But this beauty was ballsy too. When she was only 16 she wangled herself an opportunity to create a bust of Abraham Lincoln, and she was granted a half-hour audience with the president every day for five months. That takes some serious cojones. Ever see the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the U.S. Capitol rotunda? That’s her work. She was 18 when she won the commission to create this piece in 1866, becoming the first woman and youngest artist ever to be awarded a federal art commission. Mary Todd Lincoln wasn’t pleased about the selection of Ream for the 1866 comission. But Mrs. Lincoln was a hot mess, so I’ll cut her a little bit of slack here. (I’ll write more about this crazy woman in another entry.)
The sculpture of Lincoln propelled Ream to fame. She would go on to create pieces for Ulysses S. Grant, Franz Liszt, Horace Greeley, George A. Custer, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Thaddeus Stevens, Peter Cooper, and Ezra Cornell, among others. She received her second federal commission in 1875 to create a life-size statue of Admiral David Farragut. When she died in 1914, Ream had just completed her third federally commissioned sculpture, of Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet.
Fear No Weebles 
Madame, I would never have known about this artsy lady if not for you. Thank you.
Ms. Ream-Hoxie certainly had moxie. :).
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Brigitte, I might hire you to write my next entry because you thought of “Ms. Ream-Hoxie certainly had moxie.” Nice one!
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Cool. Normally I try to limit my exposure to dead chicks, but this one’s awesome. I’ve seen that statue and never knew either of her names. She not only had balls, she had a lot of talent. And convincing that male dominated world to let her create something so prestigious must have been a real accomplishment.
Cheers!
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I can definitely see how one would want to avoid dead chicks in general—they’re just not that animated. But Vinnie certainly was an interesting gal, and as you say, to convince the men to let her do the job, that takes special effort.
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I was not aware of Vinnie Ream, either, until I read this post. What a talented hot dead chick and to accomplish all she did decades before women even had the right to vote, that’s mind-boggling! It strikes me as so odd that she’s not more well known. You’d think she would have at least made it onto a postage stamp by now … Has she?
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As far as I know, she has no stamp. But that would be a cool tribute to her since coincidentally, she also worked as a postal clerk in the Dead Letter Office of the US Postal Service. This was when she was 15, before she started up her sculpting work in earnest–and she was one of the first females to work for the Postal Service. Lots of firsts for this gal!
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