Abraham Lincoln - Matthew Wilson, 1865

Matthew Henry Wilson (1814-1892) was a Philadelphia-trained portrait painter who had studied in London and built a career rendering prominent American statesmen, military officers, and civic leaders. He sat with Lincoln in the final years of the presidency, producing a likeness that was praised for its psychological fidelity at a moment when Lincoln's face had become one of the most photographed and reproduced in the world. The 1865 date places the work at the very end of Lincoln's life, during the closing months of the Civil War, and Wilson's image captures the particular exhaustion and resolve that contemporary observers noted in the president's appearance. The portrait circulated widely through lithographic reproduction, one of which is shown here, published as a campaign and commemorative print; it became part of the larger visual culture of Lincoln's martyrdom following his assassination in April 1865. Wilson's contribution to Lincoln iconography was recognized by the Navy Department, which commissioned a version for its official portrait collection, giving the likeness an institutional authority that persisted through the nineteenth century.