Abraham Lincoln

Bust of President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th President of the United States until his assassination on April 14, 1865, by John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln is shown beardless, with his neck and top of chest unclothed on a marble base, after the original plaster life mask of Lincoln made by the artist in 1860. Volk was impressed by Lincoln’s personality during the Lincoln-Douglas Debates in 1858, and extracted a promise from him to sit for a marble portrait bust sometime in the future. The opportunity arose when Lincoln was in Chicago attending to legal business in April 1860, shortly before being nominated as the Republican Presidential candidate. After President Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, the sculptor received numerous orders for plastic, marble, and bronze replicas of the original 1860 bust. The League’s bust, consisting of Lincoln’s head without the upper torso, is closely related to two posthumously cast busts in Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.