When W.F.K. Travers’s 9-foot-tall painting of Abraham Lincoln was first unveiled to America at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, it stood alongside Gilbert Stuart’s “Lansdowne Portrait” of George Washington—and together, the likenesses of America’s two most esteemed presidents stunned viewers.
The oil-on-canvas portrait of Lincoln was painted from life in 1865, mere months before his assassination, and remains one of only three known life-sized paintings of the 16th president. Several times, Congress debated purchasing the painting for display in the Capitol, until eventually it was acquired by the Rockefeller family and faded into history.
But now, roughly 147 years after the two paintings were first displayed together, Lincoln’s portrait has been returned to Washington’s side at the National Portrait Gallery thanks to the generous, long-term loan of the Hartley Dodge Foundation and its founder, Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge.
Fully restored, Lincoln’s portrait offers a rich reminder not only of Lincoln’s accomplishments, but also his struggle to restore the values of a nation then at war with itself. Hints of freedom and liberty are woven throughout: A glimpse of Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware” hangs on the wall; the globe depicts Haiti, whose independence was recognized by Lincoln; and, perhaps most poignantly, his hand rests on a book of the Constitution, beside a sculpture of a freed enslaved person and a manuscript of the 13th Amendment.
Meanwhile, in the background, a bust of George Washington looks on at the man determined to restore the Union which Washington had built—a link which ties the two men together even more than the interwoven history of their portraits.
W.F.K. Travers’s Lincoln portrait is on display at the National Portrait Gallery from February 10, 2023 until December 31, 2027.
This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
