The Fathers and Saviors of Our Country: A Presidential Sale

First-generation platinum photograph from original negative. 8 1/4 x 6 in. Matted and in a contemporary wood frame. Overall, 15 x 12 1/2 in. Inscribed by Ayres on verso, "Copyright / Geo. B. Ayres / Phila."

Following Abraham Lincoln's formal nomination as the 1860 Republican candidate for president, party officials from across the country sought new images to promote his candidacy, fearing that those images (in particular those by Alexander Hesler) currently in circulation depicted the Republican nominee as unkempt when compared to his rivals. And so, as Hesler would later write, "I went to Springfield, and made the negative that was afterward used for the campaign badges."

All told, Hesler took four photographs that day, the most popular of which proved to be the present image. Upon seeing it, Mary Lincoln said, "It is exactly like him, and his friends in New York will see him as he looks at home." Further endorsement came from Lincoln's friend Orville H. Browning, who wrote an official endorsement which read in part, "I doubt whether art is capable of transferring to canvass [sic] a more exact, and life like representation of the 'human face divine'." William Herndon also wrote: "There is the peculiar curve of the lower lip, the lone mole on the right cheek, and a pose of the head so essentially Lincolnian; no other artist ever caught it."

Alexander Hesler was an American photographer who operated studios in Galena, Chicago, and Springfield, Illinois, and his images of Abraham Lincoln are best remembered today. Upon his retirement in 1865, fellow photographer George B. Ayres bought Hesler's studios and all of his photographic negatives. Beginning in the 1880s, Ayres reproduced images of Lincoln from Hesler's original negatives and sold them from his Philadelphia studio. The original Hesler negatives were damaged during shipment from Philadelphia to St. Louis in 1933.

REFERENCES:
Ostendorf O-26 (original sitting); O-49 (reproductions by Ayers)