Miss Vinnie Ream, 1847-1914

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, the subject moved west with her family and studied at Christian College (today's Columbia College) and then worked for the U.S. postal service before deciding to pursue a career as a sculptress. She studied in Paris and Rome and became the first women to be commissioned by the U.S. Congress to sculpt a statue. Her sculpture for this commission, Abraham Lincoln, is located in the U.S. Capitol rotunda. It is based on an earlier bust done by the artist for which the president posed shortly before his death in 1864. Ream's work is the only known sculpture for which Lincoln posed.

She married Richard Leveridge Hoxie in 1878.

Bingham painted two portraits of Ream while in Washington to lobby for Missouri's war claims in his capacity as adjutant general. This portrait was acquired by the State Historical Society of Missouri in 1930, through the efforts of Curtis B. Rollins, as a gift of the second Mrs. Richard L. Hoxie, Washington, DC.