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Image ID: ANSR

Credit:

by Brady (Mathew B.)

Date:

1860.02.27

Equipment:

book

Locations & Lines:

New York NY: New York

Persons:

Lincoln (Abraham)

Structures & Establishments:

Brady’s National Photographic Portrait Gallery (New York NY)

Sources:

Allen County Public Library; Illinois Library; J. Paul Getty Museum; Library of Congress; National Portrait Gallery

Library of Congress says: Abraham Lincoln, candidate for U.S. president, before delivering his Cooper Union address, New York, N.Y., on Feb. 27, 1860.

Wikipedia says: Mathew Brady’s first photograph of Lincoln, on the day of the Cooper Union speech. Over the following weeks, newspapers and magazines gave full accounts of the event, noting the high spirits of the crowd and the stirring rhetoric of the speaker. Artists for Harper’s Weekly converted Brady’s photograph to a full-page woodcut portrait to illustrate their story of Lincoln’s triumph, and in October 1860, Leslie’s Weekly used the same image to illustrate a story about the election. Brady himself sold many carte-de-visite photographs of the Illinois politician who had captured the eye of the nation. Brady remembered that he drew Lincoln’s collar up high to improve his appearance; subsequent versions of this famous portrait also show that artists smoothed Lincoln’s hair, smoothed facial lines and straightened his subject’s “roving” left eye. After Lincoln secured the Republican nomination and the presidency, he gave credit to his Cooper Union speech and this portrait, saying, “Brady and the Cooper Institute made me President.”

Ostendorf, no. 17
Meserve, no. 19, 20

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