Bust of Abraham Lincoln
Brooklyn Museum photograph
Object Label
This portrait bust of President Abraham Lincoln was derived from the full-length standing portrait completed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1887 for Chicago’s Lincoln Park. Saint-Gaudens based Lincoln’s likeness on plaster life casts of the president’s head.
The sculptor was inspired by Lincoln’s landmark 1860 speech at Cooper Union in New York, in which the future president declared that the founders would have opposed the expansion of slavery into new American territories. In this speech Lincoln also made famous the phrase “Let us have faith that right makes might.”
Caption
Augustus Saint-Gaudens American, born Ireland, 1848–1907. Bust of Abraham Lincoln, 1922. Bronze, 28 x 17 x 14 in. (71.1 x 43.2 x 35.6 cm) 124.5 lb. (56.47kg). Brooklyn Museum, Robert B. Woodward Memorial Fund, 23.257. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 23.257_SL1.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Bust of Abraham Lincoln
Date
1922
Medium
Bronze
Classification
Dimensions
28 x 17 x 14 in. (71.1 x 43.2 x 35.6 cm) 124.5 lb. (56.47kg)
Signatures
Inscribed under shoulder of proper left side: "A. SAINT GAUDENS. / © 1922."
Markings
Foundry mark inscribed on back along bottom: "KUNSt FOUNDRY. N.Y."
Credit Line
Robert B. Woodward Memorial Fund
Accession Number
23.257
Rights
Creative Commons-BY
You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this three-dimensional work in accordance with a Creative Commons license. Fair use, as understood under the United States Copyright Act, may also apply. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
Frequent Art Questions
I really like this sculpture.
This bust of Abraham Lincoln was made by one of the most famous American artists of the late 1800s and early 1900s, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. This is actually a replica of a head from a full-length sculpture that stands in Lincoln Park in Chicago. Lincoln is looking slightly downwards, as if he is thinking or about to speak. Saint-Gaudens was working from photographs and a cast "life-mask" of Lincoln's face, since Lincoln was already dead (assassinated in 1865) by this time.Why is Lincoln looking down?
Good question. The sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens is depicting the President as a noble man, lost in thought. I think the downward tilt of the head helps the artist convey this emotion. Would you agree?Yes! I also think it conveys the solemnity of leading a country through war.I agree, there's also a very humanizing quality about it.I love this piece but were Lincoln's eyebrows really this big?
Since the artist, Saint-Gaudens, based Lincoln’s likeness on plaster life casts of the president’s head, we are assuming that this is indeed what Lincoln looked like.
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