Description:

Lincoln Abraham



Leonard Volk Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln from Holzer Collection

 

This modern plaster casting of the 1860 Volk life mask of Abraham Lincoln was owned by prominent Lincolniana Collector Harold Holzer.

 

[ABRAHAM LINCOLN.] Life Mask by Leonard Wells Volk, an unsigned and undated modern plaster reproduction. Slight chipping on edge of outer left ear. Stamped on verso, "Replica Life Mask Cast of Abraham Lincoln Chicago, Illinois, 1860" and "Americana Treasures Foundation Hinsdale, Illinois". Measures approximately 10"H x 8"W x 5"D.

 

Historical Background

In the spring of 1860, sculptor Leonard Wells Volk (1828-1895) asked Lincoln to sit for a bust. The artist began by doing a life mask, and Lincoln found the process of letting wet plaster dry on his face “anything but agreeable.” Volk had opened a studio in St. Louis in 1848 and married a cousin of Stephen A. Douglas. With Douglas’s assistance, Volk studied in Rome for two years in the mid-1850s, then settled in Chicago.

 

To make the life mask, Volk applied light oil to the face, matted down the hair with clay or lard, then applied plaster of Paris to the face with a spoon, covering everything but the nostrils and eyes. When the plaster sets, it becomes quite hot, so the sitter endures about half an hour of discomfort. When the plaster is thoroughly hardened, it is removed from the face. After it dries completely, liquid plaster of Paris is poured into it, which in turn hardens, and the outer mold is chipped off, revealing the reproduction of the face in plaster of Paris. In this case, according to Volk’s later reminiscence, Lincoln himself bent his head low and worked off the mold without break or injury, though it pulled out a few hairs about the temples, which made his eyes water.

 

The Volk life mask is one of only two completed of Lincoln; Clark Mills did the other in February 1865. In May 1860, Volk followed up his request with a separate request for a casting of Lincoln’s hands in Springfield, which Lincoln allowed.

 

Volk used the piece for later works, and other artists such as Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French studied this life mask for their own sculptures of Lincoln.

 

Provenance: This piece is from the collection of Harold Holzer (b. 1949), a prominent Lincoln scholar and collector of Lincolniana. He is the author or editor of fifty-two books, most on Abraham Lincoln, and specializes in representations of Lincoln in visual culture. Holzer was senior vice president for public affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1992 to 2015 and served as co-chair of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission from 2000 to 2010.

 

 


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