Vinnie Ream
George Peter Alexander Healy
ca. 1870
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Brigadier General Richard L. Hoxie
Accession Number
1917.11.1
Tags
jewelryPortrait female
About this artwork
The American sculptor Vinnie Ream (1847-1914) and George Healy met in Rome in the early 1870s when Ream visited Italy to oversee the carving of her full-length statue of Abraham Lincoln for the U.S. Capitol Building. Ream was the first woman, and the youngest artist, ever to receive a congressional commission for the Capitol Rotunda, in part because Lincoln had recently sat for a portrait bust by her when she was only sixteen years old.