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Scarce original 2.5 x 4 carte-de-visite photo of Abraham Lincoln in a left-facing seated profile pose by Brady's National Photographic Portrait Gallery, familiar to Lincoln scholars as Meserve No. 62, a head-and-shoulders portion of image O-61 b. This particular image, taken during Lincoln’s second sitting at Brady’s Washington studio, occurred in February 1862, and is marked by Lincoln’s noticeably somber countenance. Earlier that year, Lincoln and Mary Todd’s third son, Willie, became very ill with what was known at the time as ‘bilious fever,’ most likely typhoid fever caused by contaminated water systems at the White House. He died at the age of 11 on February 20, 1862. Whether the sitting took place before or after Willie’s death is unknown. Governor Joseph W. Fifer of Illinois, after seeing this image, commented, ‘The melancholy seemed to roll from his shoulders and drip from the ends of his fingers.’ The reverse bears a collector’s pencil notation. In fine condition.
Lincoln sat for over fifty official portraits from his lawyering days on the court circuit until his assassination; he understood the importance of creating a dignified public profile. Lincoln joked after his first photo shoot with Brady in 1860 that the photographer’s portrait helped secure his Republican nomination as president. Brady's images of Lincoln are among the most iconic.
Mathew Brady's name is synonymous with Civil War-era photography, both because of the candid images of battlefields and camp life that he and his assistants captured, but also because of his portraits of significant historical players, like Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. Brady’s photography business boomed from taking carte-de-visite images of departing soldiers at the onset of the Civil War. In 1861, Lincoln granted the photographer permission to tour battlefields and encampments to document the war experience. Brady spent an estimated $100,000 of his own money taking approximately 10,000 Civil War-related negatives. The photographer was bitterly disappointed when the federal government did not buy his collection after the war, and his heavy investment in the project led to his subsequent bankruptcy.
