Jun 21, 2016 - Sale 2420

Sale 2420 - Lot 179

Price Realized: $ 2,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
(LINCOLN, ABRAHAM.) Baker, Joseph E., lithographer; after Barry. Abraham Lincoln, from the Portrait taken from Life. Lithograph, 32 x 24 inches; moderate foxing, three bands of toning, several small areas of faint dampstaining including one on Lincoln's jaw; facsimile Lincoln signature below portrait. New York: George Ward Nichols, 1860
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Additional Details

The original crayon portrait was drawn by Charles A. Barry in Springfield, IL in June 1860, before Lincoln grew his famous beard. Barry later recalled, "At the end of ten days my crayon portrait was finished, and I felt amply rewarded for my labor when Mr. Lincoln, pointing to it, said: 'Even my enemies must declare that to be a true likeness of Old Abe '" (Clough, "Crayon Portrait of Abraham Lincoln," in Granite Monthly, October 1904, page 103). It was then drawn on stone by Joseph E. Baker of Bufford's in Boston and available in time for the 1860 presidential election. It includes a testimonial from the governor of Illinois, the mayor of Springfield, and other officials that "Mr. Barry's portrait of Old Abe is a correct and striking likeness."
All known copies read "Boston, Thayer & Eldridge, publisher for N.E. states." The present copy also has an additional statement reading "New York edition Published by Geo. Ward Nichols." It was advertised by Nichols in the inventory of his Crayon Art Gallery in the November 1860 issue of The Crayon, page 334. No other examples of either printing are known at auction since 2007; one copy (of the Boston printing) is listed in OCLC.