Portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln
On February 12, 1929, the New York Times reported the discovery of a new painting of Mary Todd Lincoln. It reported that this painting was by Francis Bicknell Carpenter. This painting was reproduced in different biographies and books such as "Mary Lincoln: Wife and Widow" by Carl Sandburg, printed in 1932.
The discoverer, one Ludwig Pflum, aka Lew Bloom, sold it to the Lincoln family for about $2,000 to $3,000 US Dollars and he died about a year later. Pflum, a former vaudeville performer who dabbled in painting on the side, as Lew Bloom, claimed the painting of Mary Lincoln had not yet been presented and done in secret at the bequest of Mrs. Lincoln by the painter Francis Carpenter. After the assassination of President Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln refused it and the painting wento into private hands until he discovered it.
This painting remained in the family until 1976, then estimated at a value of about $400,000 US dollars, when it was given to the Illinois State Historical Library, now named the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. During a 2011 restoration by art conservator Barry Bauman, it was found to be a forgery. An original oil portrait of an unknown woman, painted circa the 1860s, was modified by painting out a crucifix, adding an Abraham Lincoln brooch with other adjustments such as forging Francis Bicknell Carpenter's signature. Mr. Bauman is quoted to say, "Not only is it not Mary Lincoln, it's not Francis Carpenter."
Read more about this topic: Francis Bicknell Carpenter
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“My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry ‘til a more convenient season.”
—Mary Todd Lincoln (1818–1882)
“Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called “self-interestedness.” This was not a portrait of man “warts and all.” It was all wart.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
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—Ron Todd (b. 1927)
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—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)