Sep 27, 2018 - Sale 2486

Sale 2486 - Lot 56

Price Realized: $ 1,062
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(PHOTOGRAPHY.) [Hesler, Alexander.] The famous "Masters" portrait. Silver print, 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches, on original plain mount, in period frame and mat; mat adhesions at edges of photo, small scuff in lower right corner. Np, circa 1918
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Additional Details

This portrait was circulated in the early 20th century as a lost 1856 photograph of Lincoln by W.H. Masters of Princeton, IL. It is framed with a typed carbon letter on verso by A.D. Currier of Evanston, IL dated 20 March 1918, explaining the circumstances of the alleged original ambrotype. It would have been the second-earliest known photograph of Lincoln. However, it is clearly a retouched and reversed version of the famously tousled 1857 portrait by Alexander Hesler (Ostendorf O-2). See Ostendorf, page 258.