Excessively rare 2.5 x 3.5 carte-de-visite portrait showing President Abraham Lincoln seated in a three-quarter-length pose, holding his glasses in one hand and a copy of the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle in the other, crisply signed on the mount in black ink, “A. Lincoln.” The photo was taken by Alexander Gardner and bears his address imprinted on the reverse. Housed in a gorgeous custom-bound clamshell case with attractive marbled boards.
This exceptional image was one of six portraits captured on August 9, 1863, by Alexander Gardner, an acclaimed Civil War photographer and one-time protege of Mathew Brady. Gardner had just opened a new gallery on the corner of 7th and D Street in Washington, and the president had promised to inaugurate the studio by being the first sitter. This was his fourth sitting with the photographer, and upon privately reviewing the poses at the White House the president declared the session ‘very successful.’ Lincoln’s secretary, John Hay, wrote of this sitting in his diary: ‘I went down with the President to have his picture taken at Gardner’s. He was in very good spirits. He thinks that the rebel power is at last beginning to disintegrate, that they will break to pieces if only we stand firm now.’ The sitting came just one month after the Battle of Gettysburg, and yet—as the Civil War raged on in the background—this portrait aptly communicates the calm and dignified demeanor that defined President Lincoln as a great leader.
