Abraham Lincoln in Art: A Year’s Worth of Portraits

Since America is already in a Presidential frame of mind, with a new Commander-in-Chief who happens to be tall, lanky and (ultimately) from Illinois, taking note of Lincoln’s Bicentennial seems in order. Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, and to honor the two centuries passed since that day, Springfield’s Illinois Historic Preservation Agency has put together a calendar of portraits of the United States’ 16^th President by twelve different artists. The gallery goes as follows:

January -- A younger Lincoln just before his presidency, now at the Illinois Executive Mansion;

February -- William Camm’s 1860 depiction of Lincoln, started from a brief live posing session then finished by Camm from a photograph;

March -- William Cogswell’s 1864 study of Lincoln, Cogswell being a self-taught artist who won $3,000 in a contest for another Lincoln portrait (presently at the White House);

April -- LeRoy Neiman does Lincoln in vivid color;

May -- A reinterpretation of George Peter Alexander Healy’s White House Lincoln by Catherine Carter Critcher in 1938;

June -- Alb Meyer’s 1925 painting from an 1860 unbearded, smooth-faced Lincoln photograph by Alexander Hesler;

July -- Marla Friedman’s 2001 Lincoln portrait in profile;

August -- Fascinating “dribble technique” blue-toned portrait of Lincoln by artist Umberto Romano;

September -- 1925 William A. Patterson clean-shaven portrait, one of Patterson’s many takes on Lincoln;

October -- Chromolithograph of Lincoln by Elijah C. Middleton, a proof of which was actually sent to and commented on by Lincoln himself;

November -- Artist Francis Bicknell Carpenter’s Lincoln portrait, Bicknell having also painted previous Presidents Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce, with this work being done upon Lincoln’s request in 1864; and

December -- 1862 work by Alban Jasper Conant, another self-trained artist who also produced the “Smiling Lincoln” work.

Click here for more information and to view the portraits, which can all be had in calendar form for a mere $7.

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