Saturday, August 25,
1860.Springfield, IL. | Lincoln deposits
$300. Marine Bank Ledger. For a "fifth" and final time,
Republican presidential candidate Lincoln poses for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
artist John H. Brown, who is in Springfield, Illinois to paint "on ivory,"
Lincoln's "miniature likeness." Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice and Lincoln
ally John M. Read commissioned the painting because he was "disgusted with the
horrible caricatures of Mr. Lincoln which he had seen." Brown recalled,
"[Lincoln's] true character only shines out when in an animated conversation,
or when telling an amusing tale, of which he is very fond." R. Gerald
McMurtry, Beardless Portraits of Abraham Lincoln Painted from
Life (Fort Wayne, IN: Allen County Historical Society, 1962), 26-35;
Harold Holzer, Gabor S. Boritt, and Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Lincoln
Image: Abraham Lincoln and the Popular Print (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1984), 58, 61; Michael Burlingame, With Lincoln in the
White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay,
1860-1865 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 4-5;
Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life
and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 65; abraham
lincoln to john m. read, 27 August 1860, CW, 4:102. |