Abraham+Lincoln

Date: modeled 1887, cast ca. 1923
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1960/1960.11.3_1a.jpg?itok=IYS2HJn5 width="265" height="350" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/abraham-lincoln-21534"]] || Title: **Abraham Lincoln**

Artist: **Saint-Gaudens** Born: Dublin, Ireland 1848 Died: Cornish, New Hampshire 1907

Media: bronze on stone base Roman Bronze Works (Founder) Dimensions: 17 x 11 x 11 in. (43.2 x 27.9 x 27.9 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Cornelia E. Kremer

Accession: 1960.11.3 || This work was modeled in the same year that Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s sculpture of the sixteenth president of the United States was unveiled in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. Between 1884 and 1887, the sculptor made clay sketches and plaster models as he worked out his plans for the finished work. To create Lincoln’s face, he relied heavily on life casts made by sculptor Leonard Volk in 1860, the very year of the Cooper Union speech, which Saint-Gaudens had attended. In this speech, Lincoln stated that the United States should not allow the practice of slavery to extend to new territories, but that it could remain in the South out of necessity. On that memorable day, Saint-Gaudens was impressed with Lincoln’s height and the way he bowed his head as he acknowledged the people gathered before him. Saint-Gaudens presented Lincoln here with his head slightly tilted down, as it had remained etched in the sculptor’s memory.
 * Exhibition Label: **

August Saint-Gaudens’s recollection of the impression that Lincoln made on him during Lincoln’s 1860 Cooper Union speech: “Lincoln stood tall in the carriage, his dark uncovered head bent in contemplative acknowledgement of the waiting people, and the broadcloth of his black coat shone rich and silken in the sunlight."

Excerpt from Lincoln's 1860 Cooper Union Speech: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">“Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man such as a policy of "don’t care" on a question about which all true men do care such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.” <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Lincoln, Abraham. “Cooper Union Address.” Cooper Institute. New York, 27 Feb. 1860.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Suggested Questions: **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">How would you describe Lincoln based on this sculpture? What might the artist be saying about him?
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">How does this compare to other imaged you've seen of Lincoln?
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Why might the artist have chosen to show Lincoln this way?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Augustus Saint-Gaudens Biography
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Artist Biography <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">High Resolution Image <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">SAAM Collections Page
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