On this day, aged 18, in 1866 Lavina Ellen Ream Hoxie became the youngest and first female sculptor to receive a commission by the US government for her most famous and celebrated work, the statue of Abraham Lincoln (see also here and here) in the Capitol rotunda. Ream also sculpted the bronze of Cherokee inventor Sequoyah (the town of Vinita, Oklahoma in Statuary Hall and the monument of David Farragut in Washington DC’s Farragut Square. Although her selection by the House of Congress to render a life-sized marble of the president had already generated some controversy over her experience and false accusations by some factions that she was a “lobbyist”—the term at the time referring to a public woman of ill-repute and Ream took the slander and attacks in stride, it was mild compared to the scapegoating and unrelenting attacks to come. 
Whilst working on Lincoln in a basement studio of the Capitol, the impeachment proceedings of Andrew Johnson were taking place in the chambers above. Failing to secure a conviction that would have removed Johnson from office, by a single vote, radical elements of the Republican Party sought out someone to blame other than their own members and deflect from the bribery that was actually the motivating factor. It was discovered that the Kansas senator, Edmund G Ross, who cast the decisive vote to acquit was staying in a DC boarding house owned by Ream’s father during the trial, and it was suggested that Ream, notably absent from the family lodging operation and busy with her work, had somehow influenced Ross’ vote in order to vouchsafe her commission and preserve the legacy of Lincoln through saving his predecessor. The House passed a resolution to turn the studio space into a guardroom and nearly ejected Ream and her unfinished statue from the Capitol. The press and the art community aired their outrage at this petty retaliation and Congress eventually reversed the decision. Ream went on to open studios in New York and Washington after studying in Europe and producing busts of continental celebrities including Franz Liszt and Gustave Doré, her career essentially ending after her marriage at twenty-four as it was considered unseemly for a married woman to earn an income.
one year ago: Eilean Donan plus Castle Linlithgow
two years ago: your daily demon: Buné, assorted links to revisit, a silly super villain plus a Czech space opera
three years ago: artist Léon Spilliaert, cartooning the US constitution, assorted links worth the revisit plus moving forward with fusion technology
four years ago: more links to check out, a food writer and former pirate plus growing one’s own victory garden
