Sarah Fisher Ames

Sarah Fisher Ames
Born
Sarah Fisher Clampitt

13 Aug 1817 (1817-08-13)
Lewes, Delaware, USA
Died1901 (aged 83–84)
Washington, D.C., USA
Known forSculpture
SpouseJoseph Alexander Ames

Sarah Fisher Ames (1817–1901) was an American sculptor,[1] best known for a bust of Abraham Lincoln that she produced in 1866.

Biography

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Sarah Fisher Clampitt was born in 13 August 1817 in Lewes, Delaware. She studied art in Boston and in Rome, and married Joseph Alexander Ames, a portrait painter,[2] in 1845.[3] While in Boston, she may have attended "Conversations" hosted by women's activist Margaret Fuller.[4]: 19  The couple spent time in Rome, where Sarah Ames studied Italian sculpture. Little else is known about her early life.[3][4]: 184 

She produced sculptures of notable Americans, including C. T. Brooks (1858), John Andrew (1867), Ulysses S. Grant (1968),[3] Anson Burlingame, Ross Winans,[5] and at least five busts of Abraham Lincoln.[6] During the American Civil War, Ames worked as a volunteer nurse,[3] rising to direct the hospital situated in the U.S. Capitol. She was a good friend of Lincoln, either through her position at the hospital or the antislavery movement. Rufus Wilson, author of Lincoln in Portraiture, claimed that Ames knew Lincoln "in an intimate and friendly way" through her work at the hospital.[7][8]

Ames was one of the first sculptors of Lincoln. By 1865, she had created a plaster bust of Lincoln, which she received a patent for, and sold plaster replications of.[4]: 183–184 [5] In 1866 or 1868 Ames was commissioned to create a marble bust of Lincoln by the U.S. Congress.[3][4]: 184  In 1868, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts exhibited the bust.[4]: 184  Her work has been compared to the Lincoln bust produced around the same time by Vinnie Ream.[3] Her 1866 bust of Lincoln is held in the U.S. Capitol Building.[5] Her busts of Lincoln are also located at the Massachusetts State House, the Williams College Museum of Art, the Lynn Historical Society, and the Woodmere Art Museum.[6]

Ames exhibited her work at The Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.[8]

She died in Washington, D.C., on 8 March 1901.[6]

Abraham Lincoln by Sarah Fisher Clampitt Ames, 1868

References

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  1. ^ "Sarah Fisher Ames". ArtNet. Retrieved 22 December 2018.
  2. ^ "Ames, Sarah Fisher". Woodmere Art Museum. Retrieved 22 December 2018.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Dabakis, Melissa (Spring 2008). "Sculpting Lincoln: Vinnie Ream, Sarah Fisher Ames, and the Equal Rights Movement". www.journals.uchicago.edu. 22 (1). doi:10.1086/587917. S2CID 191491370.
  4. ^ a b c d e Dabakis, Melissa. A Sisterhood of Sculptors: American Artists in Nineteenth-Century Rome (Penn State Press, 2020).
  5. ^ a b c Skvarla, Diane K. (2005). United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art. Government Printing Office. p. 258.
  6. ^ a b c "U.S. Senate: Abraham Lincoln". United States Senate. Retrieved 22 December 2018.
  7. ^ Wilson, Rufus Rockwell (1935). Lincoln in portraiture. New York, The Press of the Pioneers, Inc. p. 178.
  8. ^ a b Nichols, K. L. "Women's Art at the World's Columbian Fair & Exposition, Chicago 1893". Retrieved 22 December 2018.
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