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Lot 163
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Abraham Lincoln Portrait Printed by Moses P. Rice, after Original Alexander Gardner Negative
Abraham Lincoln Portrait Printed by Moses P. Rice, after Original Alexander Gardner Negative
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Description:

Lincoln Abraham


Abraham Lincoln Portrait Printed by Moses P. Rice, after Original Alexander Gardner Negative

 

A Moses P. Rice gelatin silver print of President Lincoln reproduced from a Rice negative via Alexander Gardner's original wet plate negative. The black and white print has a silvered matte surface. Laid down on a paper backing pencil inscribed in the bottom margin: "Print from original negative made by Moses P. Rice Washington D.C. 1864, copyright Rice Montreal." Expected minor surface wear to photographic print, else near fine. 7.375" x 10.5". Accompanied by photocopied provenance information from the Montreal-based Rice Studio and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

 

Alexander Gardner took this photograph of Lincoln--known as the "Gettysburg" portrait or the "roving eye" portrait--in mid-November 1863. The closely cropped photo showed Lincoln's head and shoulders, complete with deeply gouged facial wrinkles, mussed cowlick, and lopsided bow tie.

 

In his article "The 'Gettysburg' Lincoln: The Back Story of a Full-Frontal Photograph," art historian Harold Holzer has described his visceral reaction to this iconic photograph: "It was Lincoln's strange gaze in the portrait that first fascinated me--the right eye a cool, intense gray, staring unblinkingly into the camera, but the left one roving upward in its socket, straying from the viewer for some unfathomable reason, perhaps a medical one, making the subject look mysterious, crafty, tragic, almost otherworldly." Holzer later speculated whether Lincoln's cast eye was caused by a childhood injury or a genetic disorder called Marfan's syndrome.

 

The provenance information included with this Riceprint portrait of Lincoln indicates that it was reproduced from an untouched negative. Accordingly, Lincoln is displayed in all of his homeliness: gaunt face, large mole on his right cheek, asymmetrical left eye, and bushy hair. Mathew Brady, in contrast, often retouched his portraits of Lincoln so that the face was softened, the hair smoothed, and the neck thickened. After his first photo shoot with Brady in 1860, Lincoln joked that the photographer’s portrait helped secure his Republican nomination as president.

 

Lincoln's contemporaries agreed that it was nearly impossible to capture the president's physical presence or spiritual essence, whether the photos were maniupulated or not. In fact, sculptor Daniel Chester French would use Gardner's "Gettysburg" Lincoln portrait as the basis for his Lincoln Monument sculpture because the President could not sit still.

 

Moses P. Rice (1839-1925) was a Canadian-born photographer, who, along with younger brother Amos I. Rice (1850-1912), opened a photo studio in Washington, D.C. in 1865. Little is known about the elder Rice brother, but some believe he may have been Gardner's onetime studio assistant. On October 29, 1891, Moses P. Rice copyrighted the original Gardner negative of the "Gettysburg" Lincoln and others (unfortunately not an isolated example of intellectual theft in that period!) Younger brother Amos later established three photo studies in Quebec and Nova Scotia.

 

Moses P. Rice had made a copy of Gardner's negative around March 1864, or, as the Rice Studios provenance says, "at the time…General U.S. Grant [was commissioned] Lieut. General of all the armies of the Republic." Rice proceeded to print hard copies from this negative up until the 1920s, of which this print is probably one.

 

Alexander Gardner (1821-1882), along with colleague Mathew Brady (1822-1896), dominated antebellum and Civil War-era American photography. Of the more than 50 official portraits of Lincoln taken from his lawyering days on the court circuit until his assassination, Gardner took 37 photographs--approximately twice the number produced by other photographers. Gardner went on to photograph the execution of Lincoln’s assassination co-conspirators.

 

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) galvanized the nascent Republican Party on the eve of the Civil War by his plain ways, folksy temperament, and unflappable devotion to the preservation of the Union. Lincoln’s homeliness was one of his most endearing attributes, further fostering the idea that the former rail-splitter born in a log cabin was one of the people.

 


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