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. President Lincoln is depicted beardless with collar and lapels. During sculptor Max Bachmann's brief time with the firm of Caproni Galleries, Inc., in Boston, he produced two busts of Lincoln, one with a beard and one without. Caproni illustrated these busts in its catalogue and advertised that they were ”considered by leading authorities to be the finest likeness of Lincoln ever produced in sculpture.” The New York foundry Roman Bronze Works produced this beardless version in 1905. Tiffany & Company and the Gorham Company, another New York foundry, later purchased the right to produce bronze reproductions of both of Bachmann’s busts of President Lincoln. Caproni Galleries also supplied plaster casts of two-life size, full-length statues of Lincoln in which each of Bachmann’s heads were attached to bodies, one of which was erected on Victory Memorial Drive in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by the Minnesota Army of the Republic in 1928.