HAROLD HOLZER
Lincoln and the Ohio Printmakers
Much has been written about the engraved
and lithographed por-
traiture of Abraham Lincoln, a pictorial
genre that did much to
benefit the nation's sixteenth president
both politically and
historically.1 These crude
and homely portrayals helped introduce
the little-known Lincoln to American
voters following his unex-
pected nomination to the presidency in
1860. Later, engravings and
lithographs provided audiences with the
first nationally-distributed
glimpses of the new president's new look
after Lincoln arrived in
Washington to assume the presidency,
sporting newly-grown
whiskers. Two years later, print
portraits became useful propagan-
da instruments in popularizing the
Emancipation Proclamation-
and its author-with an array of tributes
commemorating the
writing and announcement of the
document. And finally, after Lin-
coln's assassination the nation's
printmakers played a major role in
defining the martyr's place in archive
and folklore. The mythifica-
tion of Lincoln was not merely
illustrated by the so-called "pictures
for the people"2 -it was
given tangible form and
widespread
visibility by the infant medium. In all
these ways, engravings and
lithographs helped Lincoln even as
Lincoln (a popular subject whose
depiction usually meant profit) helped
the engravers and
lithographers.
But while there is considerable
scholarship on the subject of Lin-
coln prints as defined by
category-campaign portraits, emancipa-
tion prints, family scenes, or
assassination pictures, for example-
Harold Holzer, who has written on
Lincoln portraiture for many magazines and
historical journals, won the 1980
Barondess/Lincoln Award of the Civil War Round
Table for his contributions to the
field. He is public information director of
WNET/THIRTEEN, the public television
station in New York.
1. Primary reference is Winfred Porter
Truesdell, The Engraved and Litho-
graphed Portraits of Abraham Lincoln (Champlain, N.Y., 1933), vol. 2 (vol. 1 never
published).
2. Currier & Ives advertised their
prints as "pictures for the people," and "the
cheapest and most popular pictures in
the world." See Currier & Ives catalogue, Fall
1860; original in the Museum of the City
of New York.
Ohio Printmakers
401
no attempt has yet been made to analyze
these efforts as products
of specific and disparate geographical
areas of the country. Surely
strong regional influences were
reflected by artists and print
publishers portraying Lincoln, starting
during the hotly-contested
1860 campaign for the White House and
continuing on through the
Civil War. Yet this subject has never
been discussed.
A more intensive effort will be required
to track the Lincoln print
as it evolved in every region of the
country. But briefly speaking, it
is evident that in sharply divided New
York City, for example, a
financial as well as art center for the
nation, the legendary
lithography firm headed by Nathaniel
Currier and James Merritt
Ives mirrored the absence of a local
consensus on Lincoln and the
war by producing anti-Lincoln prints as
fervently and consistently
as it did pro-Lincoln works. The
company's 1860 campaign banners
proclaimed the virtues of Stephen
Douglas and John Bell as sincere-
ly and effectively as it portrayed
Lincoln's. Furthermore, Currier &
Ives' lithographed cartoons assailed
Lincoln as often as they
mocked his rivals.3 In a city
whose own mayor, Fernando Wood,
gave serious thought to seceding his
metropolis from the union in
alliance with the South,4 it
took until Lincoln's murder (when he was
finally acknowledged universally-in
sentiment and picture-as the
savior of the Union) for Currier &
Ives' lithographs to reflect a par-
tisan favoritism toward the president.
In Hartford, Connecticut,
meanwhile, where Currier & Ives
chief rivals, E.B. and E.C. Kellogg,
were headquartered,5 local
sentiment-in the city as well as in its
print portraits-was more solidly
pro-Union. Boston's printmaking
firms, headed by men like J.H. Bufford
and Louis Prang,6 also
reflected their region's strong Yankee
leanings. At the same time,
not surprisingly, what few Lincoln
portraits were published in the
South were blatantly hostile and
occasionally vicious.7
3. See Rufus Rockwell Wilson, Lincoln
in Caricature (New York, 1953), 5-67.
4. See Carl Sandburg, Abraham
Lincoln: The War Years (New York, 1939), vol. II,
55; also, see correspondence between
Lincoln and Mayor Wood in late 1862, in which
the leaders disagreed on whether to
negotiate with the Confederacy, in Roy P.
Basler, ed., The Collected Works of
Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953),
vol. V, 553-54.
5. The firm headed by Edmund Burke
Kellogg and Elijah Chapman Kellogg was
"for a time near rivals of Currier
& Ives" although the latter really had "no rivals,"
only "predecessors and
competitors." See Harry Twyford Peters, America On
Stone: The Other Printmakers to the American People (New York, 1931), 242-47, 11.
6. John H. Bufford, 313 Washington St.,
Boston, was a onetime artist for N. Cur-
rier, who in turn taught Winslow Homer. Bufford issued
many pro-Union Civil War
prints. Louis Prang, 159 Washington Street, was a
prolific Yankee lithographer
later celebrated for marketing the first
commercially-successful Christmas cards.
See Peters, America on Stone, 118-27,
327-428.
7. Adalbert Volck, a copperhead dentist
from Baltimore, issued a number of anti-
402 OHIO HISTORY
Considered among all these regional
products, the Lincoln por-
traits issued by the printmakers of Ohio
are rather unique, especial-
ly for so small a body of work. Though
there were far fewer print-
makers in Cincinnati than in the
publishing centers of the
Northeast, Ohio's engravers and
lithographers did manage to pro-
duce a modest but unusual portfolio of
pro-Lincoln images. While
the publication of much of this work
corresponded to the ebb and
flow of supply and demand being
experienced by the entire print-
making industry where Lincoln was
concerned (for Lincoln was a
rather unstable subject whose public
demanded images at certain
times during his career, but not at
others), some of the Ohio print
art was highly original, occasionally
experimental. And one of the
state's products was directly influenced
by Lincoln himself, so
much so that it is today considered the
closest thing to a collabora-
tion between artist and subject to have
survived the fascinating
relationship between Lincoln and the
printmakers.
Before analyzing the Lincoln portraits
produced by the Ohio
printmakers, it is essential to study
this pattern of supply and de-
mand and comprehend how it directly
influenced the productivity
of all printmakers during the sixteenth
president's relatively brief
period of national prominence.
When Lincoln was chosen by the
Republican party as its presiden-
tial nominee in May, 1860, printmakers
experienced and responded
to the initial coast-to-coast demand for
his portraits. Satisfying that
demand was made all the more difficult
because Lincoln's nomina-
tion had not been expected. He had been
the favorite son of the Il-
linois delegation, but was not the most
prominent Republican at the
convention.8 Most Americans
did not even know what Lincoln
looked like, and there was a great
clamor for his likeness as soon as
the Chicago convention adjourned.9 A
similar pattern recurred some
months later when Lincoln grew whiskers;
a second flood of print
portraits was published to satisfy
intense public curiosity about the
Lincoln etchings. See Stefan Lorant, Lincoln:
A Picture Story of His Life (New York,
1969), 168-69. Southern caricature is
discussed on 206-07.
8. The May 12, 1860, issue of Harper's
Weekly (296-97) provides a clue to
Lincoln's lowly status at the time of
the convention. A composite print of the eleven
Republicans seeking the nomination
focuses on Seward; Lincoln's was one of several
smaller ones. For other contemporary
reports on the contenders, see William B.
Hesseltine, ed., Three Against
Lincoln: Murat Halstead Reports the Caucuses of
1860 (Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1960), 161.
9. One iconographical scholar said of
Lincoln that "had he taken a stroll in San
Francisco, not one person in a hundred
would have recognized him." See Lorant,
Lincoln, 304.
Ohio Printmakers
403
first bearded chief executive.10 Interestingly,
after he assumed of-
fice, demand for Lincoln portraiture
sagged and few such pictures
were published. Military heroes emerged
instead as the favored sub-
jects of the Union printmakers. Only
later when Lincoln surprised
the public again by issuing his
Emancipation Proclamation, not
long after implying in print that to do
so would not be his immediate
policy, did demand again swell for
suitable portrayals of Lincoln,
this time as the Great Emancipator.11
Finally, Lincoln's assassina-
tion ignited the greatest demand yet
for his prints, in poses suitable
for a newly-elevated martyr. Importantly,
only during these four
specific periods-the campaign, the
growing of whiskers, the Eman-
cipation and the assassination-were
print portraits of Lincoln
published in profusion in this
country.12
During several of these periods of
widespread public demand for
likenesses of Lincoln, Ohio
lithographers (and lithographers only; no
substantial engraving industry existed
in the state) responded
along with artists in other regions
with appropriate pictorials.
Inexplicably, at other times they did
not. An exhaustive, decade-
long search by this writer for
Ohio-produced prints issued during
the first Lincoln campaign and the
subsequent bearding of the
president-elect has yielded a
surprising dearth of surviving ex-
amples.13 It may be
conjectured that Ohio's print-buying public was
well supplied during these periods with
the products of nationally-
distributed East Coast firms such as
Currier & Ives. And it may be
10. The last photograph of Lincoln
beardless was taken August 13, 1860; the first
showing him with the beginnings of a
beard on November 25, 1860. See Charles
Hamilton and Lloyd Ostendorf, Lincoln
in Photographs: An Album of Every Known
Pose (Norman, Oklahoma, 1963), 369, 372.
11. On August 20, 1862, Horace Greeley
of the New York Tribune published an
editorial, "The Prayer of Twenty
Millions," in which he pleaded for immediate eman-
cipation. Lincoln replied two days
later, and his response was also printed in the
Tribune: "My paramount object... is to save the
Union, and is not either to save or
destroy slavery." Yet only a month later, he
issued his preliminary emancipation
proclamation. See Basler, Collected Works, vol.
V, 388-89.
12. A typical Ohio print product issued
when Lincoln portraits were not in great
demand was Soldier's Memorial, published
by Ehrgott, Forbriger in May 1863, and
decorated not with a likeness of Lincoln
as commander in chief, but a blank space
upon which purchasers could paste a
photo of a departed relative. Ehrgott's Pride of
the North, published in 1862, described not Lincoln but the Clark
Mill Works. See
files of the Library of Congress.
13. An exception is an Ehrgott,
Forbriger lithographed songsheet cover entitled
Lincoln Schottische, published by A.C. Peters & Co., Cincinnati. Cited
in a pioneer
article: see John Ramsey, "Old
Prints: Lincoln Lithographs," Hobbies Magazine,
February 1939, 25. It has been
speculated that the failure of Salmon P. Chase,
Ohio's favorite son, to win the 1860
Republican presidential nomination inhibited
locally-produced portraiture of the
convention's choice, Lincoln.
404 OHIO HISTORY |
|
further speculated that only after the war had begun and Ohio had sent volunteers, signalling a strong and highly personal stake in the conflict, did regional artists finally begin portraying the commander in chief. After the outbreak of war, Ohio lithographers did produce a significant supply of Lincoln print portraiture. The 1862 announcement of Lincoln's emancipation policy,14 for example, inspired one of the most original-and controversial- print commemoratives published anywhere to mark that event. It was published in Ohio. Amidst a flurry of banal depictions of Lin- coln as savior, this effort is perhaps the most daring of the entire war, even if only because it was bound to be misunderstood. Its evolution can be traced to a symbolic 1863 painting by the artist David Gilmour Blythe (1815-1865), Abraham Lincoln Writing the Emancipation Proclamation (Fig. 1). In 1864 the painting was
14. Lincoln announced the preliminary document on September 22, 1862. See Basler, Collected Works, vol. V, 433-36. |
Ohio Printmakers 405 |
|
adapted and published as a lithograph: President Lincoln Writing the Proclamation of Freedom, January 1st, 1963 (Fig. 2). The print was "Lithogr. and printed in Colors by Ehrgott, Forbriger & Co., Cincinnati, O." Peter E. Ehrgott and Adolphus F. Forbriger, two of the leading lithographers of Cincinnati, had begun their thriving partnership in 1858. Beginning in 1861 and for the next eight years their firm operated from headquarters on Fourth and Walnut Streets in downtown Cincinnati.15 The German-born lithographers may have been attracted to the Blythe canvas because the highly representational work seemed directly influenced by the German romantic school of contemporary art. Yet it has been a matter of debate for many years among iconographical historians whether the genre was suitable for American audiences of the day. The excep- tional rarity of the Ehrgott, Forbriger print indicates that it was certainly not a best seller when it was introduced, and might even
15. See Peters, America on Stone, 169. The firm also published a lithographic por- trait of Salmon P. Chase. |
406 OHIO HISTORY
have been controversial enough for its
publishers to withdraw it
from the market.16
Local audiences might have been confused
by the print's oblique
symbolism: Lincoln resting a slippered
foot on a peace plan, for in-
stance, a device absent in the Blythe
original but inserted by the
Ohio lithographers. Or, the public
conceivably could have been of-
fended by symbols that were a bit more
shocking, such as the bust
of former president James Buchanan
strung rudely by the neck
from a nearby bookcase. Likeliest of
all, the naive audience might
simply have viewed the entire product as
reflecting not so much a
maze of artistic metaphor, but a roomful
of general clutter and
disarray unsuitable for a president of
the United States.17 It is in-
teresting, too, that the printmakers
erred in ascribing the writing of
the document to January 1, 1863. In
reality, that was the day the
proclamation became official; it had
been drafted and presented to
the cabinet the previous summer.18 However,
such errors were com-
mon in the rush by printmakers
throughout the country to
capitalize on the public's interest in
emancipation pictorials. What
is fascinating is that the Ohio
contribution to this body of work was
so original and daring that it probably
failed to win any audience at
all.
Thus it is not surprising to note that
Ohio printmakers took a
decidedly conformist route when
Lincoln's murder inspired another
flurry of demand for print portraits of
the fallen leader. The state's
artists responded with funeral and
apotheosis scenes, as well as
handsome memorial portraits-some
fanciful, others faked-as
speed and profit, not artistic quality or
accuracy, became the prime
motivations for Lincoln pictures
wherever they were published.
Initially, the greatest local interest
was focused on the Lincoln
funeral, for as the special train
carried the martyr's body westward
back to Springfield for burial, the dead
president was honored
several times along the way with major
mourning processions and
services.19 On April 29,
1865, two weeks to the day after Lincoln's
16. See R. Gerald McMurtry, ed.,
"President Lincoln Writing the Proclamation of
Freedom," Lincoln Lore no.
1573 (March, 1969), 1-4.
17. Ibid.
18. Lincoln read to the cabinet his
first draft of an Emancipation Proclamation on
July 22, 1862. See Earl Schenck Miers,
ed., Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology
(Washington, D.C., 1960), vol. III, 129.
The president had revealed to two cabinet
members-Seward and Welles-his decision
to issue the document as early as July
13. See Gideon Welles, Diary of
Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln
and Johnson, 3 vols. (Boston & New York, 1911), I, 70.
19. In fact, Lincoln was honored with no
less than thirteen funerals in thirteen dif-
Ohio Printmakers 407 |
|
death, he was given one such state funeral, in Columbus, Ohio,20 in- spiring no fewer than three locally-produced lithographic records of the great event. Ehrgott, Forbriger issued a respectful and sentimental treatment (Fig. 3). The lithograph was drawn on stone by Albert Ruger, pro- ably the same Ruger who some years later constituted the senior half of Ruger & Stone, a lithography company that operated in Madison, Wisconsin.21 S. Selleck & Co., a Columbus printer housed at 156-158 South High Street, published the Ehrgott, Forbriger scene, which depicted Lincoln's funeral car passing in review before the Ohio State House, its flags at half-mast and its eight-columned portico draped in black. Another Ruger print for Ehrgott, Forbriger, showing the same procession but from a different angle, was issued almost concurrent-
ferent cities: Washington, Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Michigan City, Chicago and Springfield. See Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., Twenty Days (New York, 1965), 140-73, 217-85. 20. Ibid., 222-23. 21. See Peters, America on Stone, 347. |
408 OHIO HISTORY |
|
Ohio Printmakers 409
ly. The very fact that so similar a
depiction could find an audience in
the state provides some indication of
what must surely have been a
powerful demand among local residents
for souvenirs of the occa-
sion. Interestingly enough, in this
second print (Fig. 4) Ruger drew a
team of eight white horses leading the
Lincoln catafalque; his earlier
print had shown a six-horse team. The
new lithograph depicted
eight soldiers marching alongside the
hearse; the first had featured
only six. Ironically, despite these
unexplained flourishes, the revi-
sion somehow evoked a less grandiose
scene than the earlier effort.
Its closer perspective actually reduced
the panoramic sweep of the
original.
But the grandest of all lithographic
views of the Columbus funeral
was Funeral Obsequies of the Late
Pres't A. Lincoln (Fig. 5), drawn
on stone by J.H. Studer for a competing
Cincinnati firm, Middleton,
Strobridge & Co. of 119 Walnut
Street. Elijah C. Middleton (former-
ly of Middleton, Wallace & Co. of
115 Walnut) had formed a partner-
ship with Hines Strobridge around 1859
(with Dominique C.
Fabronious as an unbilled associate in
the company).22 Earlier, Mid-
dleton had begun his career producing
still-life lithographs, but
quickly graduated in the late 1850s to
patriotic portraiture of such
popular subjects as Washington,
Lafayette and Jackson. In col-
laboration with Strobridge, Middleton
would produce important
regional wartime lithography, including
state maps and a scene of
the Rev. L. F. Drake, chaplain of the
31st Ohio Volunteers,
preaching at Camp Dick Robinson in
1861.23
Therefore it was all but expected that
the firm would also com-
memorate the funeral service for Lincoln
in Columbus. In fact, their
effort was far superior in scope and
artistry to the two scenes
published by Ehrgott, Forbriger. Not
only was the State House
depicted (more expansively draped than
in the Ehrgott, Forbriger
print), but also the entire gated square
that sprawled from its steps,
plus the surrounding public and private
buildings. The impressive
vista provided a grander background for
the passage of the Lincoln
funeral cortege, depicted below. So
intricately detailed was the Mid-
dleton, Strobridge work that every
merchant's sign in the square
was faithfully reproduced-including
those of Knabe's Piano
Fortes, Red's Hoop Skirt Factory, and
even Excelsior Billiards,
housed in a seedy-looking four-story
structure at the far right.
Clearly visible as well, though not
depicted in either of the Ehrgott,
22. Ibid., 284, 185. The firm
also issued scenes of the Battle of Shiloh, the pontoon
bridge at Cincinnati, the capture of
Fort Henry and other local pieces.
23. Ibid., 185.
410 OHIO HISTORY
Forbriger interpretations, was a small
banner hung from the tym-
panum of the state house and bearing the
famous words of Lincoln's
second inaugural address: "With
malice toward none/With charity
for all." The effect was properly
reverential, perhaps even ma-
jesterial, and a decided contrast to the
humble scenes depicted by
Ehrgott, Forbriger. Apparently the Ohio
printmakers were deter-
mined to publish views of the event to
suit all tastes and expecta-
tions. What the event really looked like
will probably never be
known.
Another Ohio artist also contributed to
the flood of post-
assassination prints, his of a
strikingly different genre: the
apotheosis picture, depicting Lincoln's
ascent into heaven and being
welcomed by George Washington, his
predecessor in presidential
immortality. The deaths of these two
presidents, separated by
sixty-six years, unleashed unequalled torrents
of national grief that
were quickly crystallized in strong
visual terms through memorial
portraiture. When Lincoln died, many
printmakers-ignoring the
constraints of chronological
sensibility-paired the two in prints to
evoke the importance of the imagined
meeting of the founder and
preserver of the union.24 Most
maudlin of these pairings were the so-
called apotheosis prints, in which
period furnishings and
embellishments were replaced by the
billowing clouds of the imag-
ined hereafter. An interesting effort of
this type was based on a
drawing by Henry A. Mumaw, a primitive
artist from Winesburg,
Ohio (Fig. 6), of whom little is
known beyond the existence of this
drawing. The sketch did, however, serve
as the model for a widely-
circulated lithographic adaptation (Fig.
7), probably the work of an
Ohio print publisher, although no
identification was provided.
Other local lithographers preferred to
publish more mundane
memorial portraits depicting Lincoln in
a straightforward manner,
though often his appearance was improved
through sympathetic
alterations of the late president's less
conventional features.
Moreover, many of these prints were
based on photographs that had
been taken several years before the
president's death-before his face
thinned and grew darker and more lined,
reflecting the pressures
and sorrows of four years of internecine
warfare. Rather than base
their post-assassination pictorial
tributes on more recent
24. See Harold Holzer, "Lincoln and
Washington: The Printmakers Blessed their
Union," The Register of the
Kentucky Historical Society, 75 (July, 1977), 204-13.
Also, Davida Tenenbaum Deutsch,
"Washington Memorial Prints," Magazine Anti-
ques, CXI (February, 1977), 324-31.
Ohio Printmakers 411 |
|
412 OHIO HISTORY |
|
photographs that revealed Lincoln's harrowing appearance at the time of his death, printmakers consciously reverted to more flatter- ing camera likenesses even though they were outdated. Ohio print- makers did the same. An 1864 photograph made at the Mathew Brady Studios (Fig. 8), for example, became the model for a youthful-looking vignette lithograph issued by Gibson & Co. of 123 Main Street, Cincinnati (Fig. 9).25 To disguise the origins of the print (lithographers did not like to make obvious their dependence on other media, hence they seldom credited photographic sources and masked them whenever they could), Gibson reversed the Brady photograph into a mirror image of the original. In the Gibson view, for this reason, Lincoln's famous mole disappears altogether; it was simpler to remove it than explain its appearance on the wrong cheek. In addition, Gibson thickened Lincoln's beard, smoothed down his hair, darkened his eyebrows and smoothed the wrinkles of his face. His famous watch chain, visible in many photographs, was eliminated. Finally, Gibson substituted for Lincoln's familiar black bow tie a floppy cravat the
25. See Peters, America on Stone, 195. |
Ohio Printmakers 413 |
|
likes of which Lincoln never wore as president. The odd result was an unrealistic, almost romanticized likeness, looking very little like Lincoln ever appeared during his White House years. Another Brady photograph (Fig. 10), this a well-known pose taken February 9, 1864, served as the model for a much-softened lithographic adaptation by Ehrgott, Forbriger & Co. (Fig. 11). It was remarkable because it reduced the size of Lincoln's generous mouth by half. Again, a printmaker had made a major alteration in Lincoln's appearance to conform to the standards of romantic por- traiture. Yet another much-outdated photograph (Fig. 12)-this an even earlier pose, taken by C. S. German back in Springfield, Illinois before Lincoln had even assumed the presidency and only a few weeks after he had begin growing whiskers-nonetheless became a favorite model for post-assassination print portraits. Gibson & Co. issued an adaptation (Fig. 13) that was harsh by comparison to the firm's treatment of the 1863 Brady pose. Here the printmaker con- ceded the five years that had elapsed since the photographic model was taken and added harsh age lines to Lincoln's forehead and eyes. |
414 OHIO HISTORY |
|
Ehrgott, Forbriger & Co., meanwhile, used the same picture, without significant alteration, as the source for a centerpiece lithograph on a unique advertising circular prepared on behalf of the Sangamo Insurance Company of Springfield (Fig. 14). The unusual print also featured medallion-size border portraits of Lincoln's Springfield home, his tomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery, the log cabin he had helped build in Macon County in 1830, along with scenes of a young Lincoln splitting rails and rafting down the Mississippi River on a flatboat. The company responsible for commissioning this charming effort was headed by Jesse K. Dubois, who had been an in- timate friend of the late president26 and may well have supplied the 26. See Paul M. Angle, Here I Have Lived: A History of Lincoln's Springfield (Chicago and New Salem, 1971), 191, 252, 284. |
Ohio Printmakers 415
Cincinnati lithographers with the
biographical details required for
the decorative border portraiture.
Not all printmakers so faithfully
reproduced period photographs.
Some took radical shortcuts to save
time in order to beat out com-
peting firms for publishing primacy.
One printmaking device was
particularly appalling: the practice of
placing Lincoln's head atop
the bodies of other famous men in
historical prints. This
phenomenon, while bizarre, is
reasonably simple to explain. Many
printmakers stored their supplies of
outdated plates portraying
famous men of earlier eras. Though such
prints were no longer
saleable, the plates themselves were
too valuable to discard. To
satisfy quickly the demand for novel
Lincoln portraiture, and to
save the cost of commissioning
altogether new plates, many print-
makers burnished out the heads of the
original subjects, and in-
serted newly-drawn heads of Lincoln.27
In this manner various print-
makers fused Lincoln's head onto the
bodies of Calhoun, Jackson
and Fremont.28 It seemed not
to matter to the print publishers that
bodies thus used to support Lincoln's
physiognomy usually looked
little like Lincoln's own, or that the
clothing depicted was frequent-
ly long out of style. In one
preposterous composite, the body of Mar-
tin Van Buren, one of the shortest
presidents, was made to support
the head of Lincoln, the tallest
president.29 Yet these ungainly
prints somehow enjoyed a substantial
popularity, further evidence
of the public's gullibility and naivete
during the post-assassination
Lincoln print boom. In Ohio, a typical
example began as an Ehrgott,
Forbriger lithograph of Andrew Johnson
as military governor of
Tennessee (Fig. 15). Later, the
printmaking firm issued the same
scene, but with Lincoln's head now
substituted for Johnson's (Fig.
16) and based in part on an old 1861 Brady studio camera
model
(Fig. 17). This is the sole known example of an Ohio-produced
"hydra" portrait of the
sixteenth president. But Ehrgott, Forbriger
appears to have been especially
prolific at these works. The firm
also issued a single-equestrian scene
that at various times featured
as its rider-subject George Meade,
Ulysses S. Grant, George
Stoneman and Dan E. Sickles.30
This is not to suggest that some of
Ohio's post-assassination Lin-
coln portraiture was not original and
imaginative. Peter E. Ehrgott
27. See Milton Kaplan, "Heads of
State," Winterthur Portfolio no. 6 (1970),
135-50.
28. See Lorant, Lincoln, 304-07.
29. Ibid.
30. See Kaplan, "Heads of
State," 145-46.
416 OHIO HISTORY |
|
Ohio Printmakers 417 |
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-now in collaboration with a new partner, Adolph K. Krebs, formerly of Pittsburgh31-published in 1870 an ingenious lithograph, Union Prisoner's Occupation (Fig. 18), depicting a prisoner of war sculpting a relief bust of Lincoln on his cell wall. In- terestingly, the model for the Lincoln picture-within-the-picture was the same C. S. German photograph (See Fig. 12) that Ehrgott had used as the source for his Sangamo Insurance Company print (See Fig. 13). Apparently the photo was Ehrgott's favorite, for he did not hesitate to reuse it. But the most interesting Ohio effort of all was unquestionably the one influenced directly by Lincoln himself. It should be noted that the president was by nature a self-proclaimed "indifferent judge"32 of his own portraiture. He seldom commented at all on the many photographs, paintings and prints of himself he was compelled to
31. See Peters, America on Stone, 169, 256. 32. Lincoln to engraver Thomas Doney, July 30, 1860. See Basler, Collected Works, vol IV, 89. |
418 OHIO HISTORY
see. Most often he responded with
perfunctory compliments, or a
self-conscious joke allowing that the
interpretation was the best
that could be expected of such a poor
subject.33 Yet once, and once
only, Lincoln did offer comparatively
extensive comments about a
print portrait-to an Ohio lithographer
who may have taken Lin-
coln's advice and revised his effort to
produce the nearest thing to a
collaboration of purpose that has survived.
In December, 1864, Cin-
cinnati's Elijah C. Middleton sent to
Lincoln a proof copy of a pro-
posed chromolithograph of the president.
Lincoln, for once shedding
his characteristic diffidence and
frequently-professed ignorance of
matters artistic, broke precedent and
offered priceless technical ad-
vice to the artist. (Fig. 19):
Mr. E. C. Middleton
Dear Sir:
Your picture presented by Mr. Lutz is,
in the main, very good. From a line
across immediately above the eye-brows,
downward it appears to me
perfect - Above such line I think it is
not so good-that is, while it gives
perhaps a better fore-head, it is not
quite true to the original. If you were
present I could tell you wherein, but I
can not well do so on paper-The next
best thing I suppose would be to
carefully study a photograph.
Yours truly
A. Lincoln 34
It seems clear that Lincoln's
suggestions were incorporated into
the final version of the Middleton
chromolithograph (Fig. 20), which
was distributed widely in 1865, for the
surviving copies bear a
striking resemblance to the 1864 Brady
studio photograph (See Fig.
10) which other printmakers, Ohio's included, had adapted
with in-
ferior results. Middleton's remarkable,
lifelike interpretation-as
"true to the original" as Lincoln
would have wished-both climaxed
and crowned the brief but intensive
relationship between Lincoln
and Ohio's printmakers,
By consulting photographs or daring to
adapt original art; by
working with a commendable sense of
newsworthiness to record in
detail the state's final farewell to the
Great Emancipator; by
reacting predictably to several periods
of public demand with ap-
propriate, formula portraits; and even
by practicing artistic fakery
in the name of high sales, Ohio's
lithographers created a unique and
33. See Harold Holzer, "Lincoln and
His Prints: A Very Indifferent Judge," Lin
coin Herald, 77 (Winter, 1975), 203-11.
34. Lincoln to Elijah C. Middleton,
December 30, 1864. See Basler, Collectec
Works, vol. VIII, 191-92.
Ohio Printmakers 419 |
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memorable portfolio of Lincoln print art. Seen for the first time as a regional product, it at once reflects the state's decided unionism while implying early doubts about the course of the war and the na- tional leadership. On an artistic level, Ohio's Lincoln prints manage to mirror all the strengths and weaknesses of the products of the Eastern print publishing establishment, even while advancing a wholly original, personal style of honoring and later memorializing, the nation's sixteenth president. |
HAROLD HOLZER
Lincoln and the Ohio Printmakers
Much has been written about the engraved
and lithographed por-
traiture of Abraham Lincoln, a pictorial
genre that did much to
benefit the nation's sixteenth president
both politically and
historically.1 These crude
and homely portrayals helped introduce
the little-known Lincoln to American
voters following his unex-
pected nomination to the presidency in
1860. Later, engravings and
lithographs provided audiences with the
first nationally-distributed
glimpses of the new president's new look
after Lincoln arrived in
Washington to assume the presidency,
sporting newly-grown
whiskers. Two years later, print
portraits became useful propagan-
da instruments in popularizing the
Emancipation Proclamation-
and its author-with an array of tributes
commemorating the
writing and announcement of the
document. And finally, after Lin-
coln's assassination the nation's
printmakers played a major role in
defining the martyr's place in archive
and folklore. The mythifica-
tion of Lincoln was not merely
illustrated by the so-called "pictures
for the people"2 -it was
given tangible form and
widespread
visibility by the infant medium. In all
these ways, engravings and
lithographs helped Lincoln even as
Lincoln (a popular subject whose
depiction usually meant profit) helped
the engravers and
lithographers.
But while there is considerable
scholarship on the subject of Lin-
coln prints as defined by
category-campaign portraits, emancipa-
tion prints, family scenes, or
assassination pictures, for example-
Harold Holzer, who has written on
Lincoln portraiture for many magazines and
historical journals, won the 1980
Barondess/Lincoln Award of the Civil War Round
Table for his contributions to the
field. He is public information director of
WNET/THIRTEEN, the public television
station in New York.
1. Primary reference is Winfred Porter
Truesdell, The Engraved and Litho-
graphed Portraits of Abraham Lincoln (Champlain, N.Y., 1933), vol. 2 (vol. 1 never
published).
2. Currier & Ives advertised their
prints as "pictures for the people," and "the
cheapest and most popular pictures in
the world." See Currier & Ives catalogue, Fall
1860; original in the Museum of the City
of New York.