(Abraham Lincoln)

Thomas Hicks, a noted nineteenth-century portraitist and genre painter, is best known for the portrait of Abraham Lincoln he painted in Springfield after Lincoln's nomination as the 1860 Republican presidential candidate (see preceding lot).

This portrait of a bearded Lincoln was evidently rediscovered by Daniel W. Patterson of New York City in the 1920s. Photocopies of various correspondence gathered by Patterson in the course of his researching the painting accompany the lot. A four-page letter by Philip H. Shedd indicates that the Prang Company of Boston intended to publish a chromolithograph of the painting in the mid-1890s, but that the project never advanced beyond the proof stage. Patterson also claimed to have found a diary kept by Mrs. Hicks that stated that the couple was in Washington in 1862. However, there is no evidence that Lincoln sat for Hicks in the nation's capital, nor even that they met again after their sessions in Springfield.

The painting is accompanied by a chromolithograph reproduction of the portrait, captioned "Abraham Lincoln Painted from Life, 1862, at Washington, D.C. by Thomas Hicks, N.A."