Abraham Lincoln (1868) by Sarah Fisher Clampitt Ames

Frustratingly little is known about the life and career of Sarah Fisher Ames. Born Sarah Clampitt in Lewes, Delaware, near the mouth of the Delaware River, she apparently moved at some point to Boston, where she studied art. She spent time in Rome, but whether she studied formally—and, if so, with whom—is not known. Wife of the portrait painter Joseph Alexander Ames, she produced at least five busts of President Lincoln, but the circumstances of their production, again, are not well documented. While Ames was able to patent a bust of the 16th president in 1866, the drawings were destroyed 11 years later in a U.S. Patent and Trademark  building fire.

As a nurse with the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War, Ames was responsible for the temporary hospital established in the U.S. Capitol in Washington. One source reports that through this position she knew Lincoln “in an intimate and friendly way,” but she also might have met the president through her activity as an antislavery advocate. Regardless of the origin of their association, it likely led to formal sessions with Lincoln, in which Ames was able to sketch, and perhaps model, his features.

Other known works by the artist include a plaster bust of General Grant, which was exhibited at the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition and won an award at the Paris Exposition of 1900, and busts of American diplomat Anson Burlingame and railroad engineer Ross Winans. Ames died in Washington, D.C., in 1901.