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Life mask of Abraham Lincoln
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Several weeks before Abraham Lincoln secured the
presidential nomination of the Republican Party
on May 18, 1860, the sculptor Leonard Wells Volk
asked to do his portrait. Realizing that Lincoln
was unable to come often to his Chicago studio for
sittings, Volk decided to make a life mask, upon
which he based his bust. “There is the animal
himself,” Lincoln remarked when the mask was
shown to him. |
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Leonard Wells Volk (1828–1895)
Plaster, 1917 cast after 1860 original
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
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