Description:

"MASTERS" PHOTO OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Controversial photograph of Abraham Lincoln said to have been taken of Abraham Lincoln on July 4, 1856, before the Lincoln-Douglass debates would make him a nationally-recognized political figure. The well-retouched sepia image, 7" x 9" (sight), appears to be an albumen silverprint, though we have not disassembled the frame to determine its exact composition. This photo, attributed to William H. Masters, was reprinted by his son, photographer C. H. Masters from the long-lost original ambrotype ca. 1909. Very fine condition, set in a period frame. William H. Masters allegedly photographed former Lincoln while he was in Princeton, Illinois, to give a speech at Bryant's Woods on July 4, 1856. It has been speculated that his photograph is actually a retouched version of a previously existing portrait, the "tousled hair" portrait by Alexander Hesler. The merits of the Masters portrait of Lincoln as compared to the Hesler photograph taken in Chicago are discussed on page 258 of "Lincoln in Photographs, an Album of Every Known Pose", published in 1964 by Charles Hamilton and Lloyd Ostendorf . Masters claimed his portrait was taken seven months earlier than Hesler's although the Masters portrait appears to be a reversed and retouched version of the Hesler photo. Another source, "The Lincoln Family Album" published in 2006 by Southern Illinois University Press and written by Mark E. Neely Jr. and Harold Holzer, page 25 mentions the Lincoln Family having a Masters portrait and Lincoln's opinion of it:
"This is Abraham Lincoln in 1857, two weeks after his forty-eighth birthday...The photograph is the family's own 2 x 3 inch, or sixth-plate, mirror-image tintype copy of the original taken on February 28, 1857, by Chicago photographer Alexander Hesler. The portrait is enclosed in a decorative brass mat and framed in a book-style morocco case. It was produced not by Hesler but by William Haven Masters of Princeton, Illinois, who probably re-photographed it on tin from a surviving Helser paper print; Hesler's original negative had perished in the Chicago fire...Lincoln himself admired the likeness, pronouncing it 'a very true one,' but his wife Mary, a stickler for dignity, did not. Lincoln explained that her 'objection arises from the disordered condition of the hair.' The tintype was presented to Robert T. Lincoln in 1885 by a local widow in whose home his father had stayed in 1856. The old lady was convinced, along with many of her Princeton neighbors that Lincoln had sat for Masters in Princeton that day, with this image as a result." The photo offered here is framed with the transcript of a letter from one "A. D. Currier" who adds further to the legend of the Masters "original", and the letter bears an unrelated 1932 gift inscription. Whether original or a retouched period "mirror" of Hessler's work, this is nonetheless a rare image kept by the Lincoln Family itself and admired by the late president. With research material .

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February 19, 2014 11:00 AM EST
Elkton, MD, US

Alexander Historical Auctions LLC

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