(LINCOLN ABRAHAM) Middleton Elijah C; lithographer Untitled

Sale 2310 - Lot 167

Price Realized: $ 540

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(LINCOLN, ABRAHAM.) Middleton, Elijah C.; lithographer. Untitled portrait of Lincoln. Chromolithograph in "warranted oil colors," 16 3/4 x 13 1/2 inches oval, mounted on canvas and affixed to wooden stretcher as issued; minimal wear at edges, but remarkably fresh and clean; faint ink lithographer's stamp on verso. With original frame, gilt on plaster, chipped. [Cincinnati, OH, 1864]

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The original image for this portrait was a photograph by Anthony Berger in Mathew Brady's Washington studio on 9 February 1864. You may recognize it from the five-dollar bill. Middleton had a copy sent to the president, who offered this critique in a 30 December 1864 letter: "Your picture . . . is, in the main, very good. From a line across immediately above the eye-brows, downward it appears to me perfect. Above such a line I think it is not so good--that is, while it gives perhaps a better fore-head, it is not quite true to the original." Lincoln also suggested that Middleton should study a photograph, apparently not realizing that this was a faithful rendition of one. See Holzer, Lincoln Image, page 136; Meserve 87; and the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, page VIII:191.