Lincoln Life Mask by Leonard Volk

Lincoln Life Mask by Leonard Volk

$69.00

Leonard Wells Volk was born at Wellstown, New York. He first followed the trade of a marble cutter with his father in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In 1848 he opened a studio in St Louis, Missouri, and in 1855 was sent by his wife's cousin, politician Stephen A. Douglas, to Rome to study. Returning to America in 1857, he settled in Chicago, where he helped to establish the Academy of Design and was for eight years its head. In the spring of 1860, during Abraham Lincoln's visit to Chicago, Volk asked him to sit for a bust. When Lincoln agreed, the artist decided to create a life mask. Lincoln found the process of letting wet plaster dry on his face, followed by a skin-stretching removal process, "anything but agreeable." But he endured it with good humor, and when he saw the final bust, he was quite pleased, declaring "There is the animal himself." John Hay (later Lincoln's private secretary in the White House) described the portrait as "a face full of life, of energy, of vivid aspiration." Offering a remarkable reproduction of Volk's Lincoln Life Mask, measuring 10-inches, crafted in crushed stone resin.

Lincoln Life Mask by Leonard Volk
Item #MM703B

Availability: Ships in 2-3 Days.


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