Description:

Lincoln Abraham 1809 - 1865
Lincoln Memorial architect Henry Bacon's copy of Hesler's celebrated portrait of a beardless Lincoln, printed by George B. Ayres




Mounted albumen photograph, 7" x 8.75", with portion of embossed credit "B. AYRES" stamped at the bottom left corner. Signed on the verso "Copyright Geo. B. Ayres Phila."Ostendorf O-26. Offered together with George B. Ayres' explanatory print: "HISTORY OF THE NEGATIVES" mounted on the backing paper of a previous frame which also includes a note of provenance at bottom. Trimmed, some very minor abrasions to emulsion and mounting remnants well clear of Lincoln's portrait, overall very good.

Chicago photographer Alexander Hesler was invited to photograph Lincoln in Springfield in June 1860 soon after his nomination for President at the Republican National Convention. During the sitting in the Old State House Hesler took three portraits. Lincoln remarked upon seeing the proofs, "That looks better and expresses me better than I have ever seen; if it pleases the people I am satisfied."

This photograph is considered one of the finest ever taken of Lincoln. His law partner William Herndon noted of it, "There is the peculiar curve of the lower lip, the lone mole on the right cheek, and a pose of the head so essentially Lincolnian; no other artist has ever caught it." (Ostendorf O-26)

Artist George B. Ayres acquired two of Hesler's original negatives following the close of the Civil War and made a living selling prints of them from the 1880s through the turn of the century. Ayres' original interpositive for this image was broken in transit in the 1930s.

The present photograph carries a particularly fine association: it was owned by Henry Bacon (1866-1924), the architect who designed the Lincoln Memorial in Washington as attested by a note in the hand of his older brother Francis H. Bacon (1856-1940) who inscribes upon the backing paper of the former frame: "This Photograph was in Herny Bacon's Office - New York The Architect of the Lincoln Memorial at Washington." The Lincoln Memorial proved to be Bacon's final effort before his death in 1924. The memorial, which took nearly ten years to construct, completed, according to one correspondent, "gives to Washington three dominating structures, each different but each fitting into a harmonious whole, on the Mall." The memorial, on the western end of the National Mall, glistened "like a flawless gem in its setting... [a] memorial that perpetuates in marble, sculpture and fresco, the spirit of Abraham Lincoln" (New York Times, May 31, 1922, p. 1). For his work on the memorial, Bacon received the coveted Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects in 1923.

Below, Bacon's brother, who was also a noted architect and designer, presents the photograph to the noted Harvard physician, "Dr Joseph C. Aub." Aub (1890-1973) was a pioneering researcher in the study of cancer and industrial toxicity. Francis had served as his brother's chief draftsman for the Harvard archeological expeditions from 1881 to 1883 in Assos, Turkey.

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