Description:

Lincoln Mary



Mary Todd Lincoln in Mourning Attire, Period Carte de Visite

 

Period carte de visite depicting Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882) in mourning attire, ca. 1865-1882. After the original studio portrait taken by J. Ward & Son, a photographic firm located at 125 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts. (See Library of Congress, Lot 14043-2, no. 435, for an example.) Sepia toned albumen print mounted on cream stock card. In very good condition, with some toning, water stains, and minor loss. Mounting traces verso. Overall 2.375" x 4". From the collection of Harold Holzer, the noted Lincoln historian.

 

Mary Todd Lincoln is shown wearing a black gown with 3/4 length bell sleeves, and a beribboned bonnet adorned with artificial flowers. The original J. Ward & Son view showed more of the studio background, which included drapery and a fluted column at left. This carte de visite is a detail cropped at left and bottom.

 

There is a certain interesting tension underlying this photograph. While Lincoln is complying with typical mid-nineteenth-century social conventions in wearing black, she is clearly pushing the boundaries of self-expression with her festive bonnet. She is mourning, but she is mourning in style. In many ways, this can be seen as just a continuation of Lincoln's bold sartorial track record.

 

Lincoln had gained a reputation as a fashion trendsetter during her husband's tenure at the White House. The First Lady loved clothes and accessories, high-quality fabrics cut in the latest style and often modeled after French Empress Eugenie. She employed former slave Elizabeth Keckley as a private fashion designer and dressmaker. Lincoln consistently overspent her allowances and concealed the true extent of her expenditure from her husband. Her extravagance was probably motivated in part by mental imbalance, yet it also showed her acute awareness of image and status. Mary Todd Lincoln took seriously her position as First Lady; she believed that her husband's administration was represented as much through her personal dress, or the redecoration of the White House, as it was by his public policies.

 

Lincoln wore mourning dress, or widow's weeds, following her husband's assassination in April 1865 until her death in the summer of 1882. The First Lady had also worn mourning for a good portion of her husband's first term after the typhoid fever death of her third son Willie (1850-1862).

 

Provenance: From the collection of preeminent Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer (born 1949). A historian specializing in Lincoln and the Civil War era, Holzer has authored, co-authored, and edited 52 books; his Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion won the 2015 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. Holzer has done much to popularize Lincoln studies by frequently appearing on radio and television. Much of Holzer's work explores Lincoln's speeches, debates, and public image.

 



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