A contemplative and psychologically searching portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who would later carve Mount Rushmore, cast by the Gorham Manufacturing Company and bearing the artist's incised signature on the top of the bench. The largest of the authorized reduction sizes, measuring 21 inches high, 29 inches wide, and 16 inches deep.
The composition is an authorized reduction of Borglum's celebrated monument of 1911, the life-size Seated Lincoln that stands before the Essex County Courthouse in Newark, New Jersey, and which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. The monument was funded by a bequest from the Newark merchant Amos Hoagland Van Horn, cast at Gorham's New York foundry, and unveiled by former President Theodore Roosevelt on Memorial Day, 1911. Roosevelt, on seeing it, is said to have remarked that it did not look like a monument at all, a comment Borglum received as the highest praise. Borglum authorized a small number of reductions in three sizes, cast by Gorham for private collectors, the largest of which is the present bronze.
Unlike the grand rhetorical monuments that define Lincoln's public image, Seated Lincoln presents the sixteenth president in a moment of private solitude, thoughtful, burdened, and introspective. Borglum drew on accounts that Lincoln would withdraw to a bench in the White House garden through the darkest years of the Civil War, seeking quiet and respite from the pressures of command. There is no gesture toward the heroic, no rhetorical flourish. This is a portrait of a man thinking, not performing.
Lincoln sits bareheaded, his stovepipe hat set on the bench at his side. The posture is not one of rest but of inward contemplation. The near arm is drawn down, and across the body, the shoulders carry a downward weight, and the head inclines over a lowered gaze, the whole figure closed upon itself in thought. Borglum works here in the contemplative mode that Rodin had made the defining sculptural language of the age, the mode of the Thinker, the seated figure given wholly over to the labor of thought. Where Rodin's subject is universal, Borglum's is particular and human, Lincoln alone in the garden with the weight of the Civil War upon him.
The debt was one Borglum acknowledged throughout his life. He came to sculpture in Paris in the early 1890s, training at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts, and it was there that he entered the circle of Auguste Rodin, becoming a frequent presence in the older sculptor's studio and forming a friendship that endured until Rodin's death in 1917. Rodin's example marked his work permanently, in its psychological depth and its modeled, light-catching surfaces. Writing in 1918, Borglum judged Rodin "the most creative force in modern art," a sculptor who had, in his estimation, modeled himself out of mere craftsmanship into an intense and philosophizing power.
The rich brown patina deepens the nuanced surface modeling, catching light across the coat folds and the planes of the face and lending warmth to a composition that depends on subtlety for its effect.
Borglum's engagement with Lincoln was lifelong. In 1908, he completed a marble bust of the president, now in the crypt of the United States Capitol, an early mark of his commitment to Lincoln's likeness and legacy. Decades later, he would carve Lincoln on an unprecedented scale as one of the four presidents at Mount Rushmore. Seated Lincoln stands as the intimate counterpart to those heroic undertakings, revealing Borglum not only as a sculptor of national symbols but as an interpreter of individual character.
Provenance: Private collection, California.
Condition: Very good overall. The bronze retains a rich original brown patina throughout. The signature on the bench top is clear and legible. The foundry is stamped GORHAM CO. FOUNDERS, with casting number Q501, to the underside. Minor wear consistent with age and honest use. No restorations noted.
A contemplative and psychologically searching portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who would later carve Mount Rushmore, cast by the Gorham Manufacturing Company and bearing the artist's incised signature on the top of the bench. The largest of the authorized reduction sizes, measuring 21 inches high, 29 inches wide, and 16 inches deep.
The composition is an authorized reduction of Borglum's celebrated monument of 1911, the life-size Seated Lincoln that stands before the Essex County Courthouse in Newark, New Jersey, and which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. The monument was funded by a bequest from the Newark merchant Amos Hoagland Van Horn, cast at Gorham's New York foundry, and unveiled by former President Theodore Roosevelt on Memorial Day, 1911. Roosevelt, on seeing it, is said to have remarked that it did not look like a monument at all, a comment Borglum received as the highest praise. Borglum authorized a small number of reductions in three sizes, cast by Gorham for private collectors, the largest of which is the present bronze.
Unlike the grand rhetorical monuments that define Lincoln's public image, Seated Lincoln presents the sixteenth president in a moment of private solitude, thoughtful, burdened, and introspective. Borglum drew on accounts that Lincoln would withdraw to a bench in the White House garden through the darkest years of the Civil War, seeking quiet and respite from the pressures of command. There is no gesture toward the heroic, no rhetorical flourish. This is a portrait of a man thinking, not performing.
Lincoln sits bareheaded, his stovepipe hat set on the bench at his side. The posture is not one of rest but of inward contemplation. The near arm is drawn down, and across the body, the shoulders carry a downward weight, and the head inclines over a lowered gaze, the whole figure closed upon itself in thought. Borglum works here in the contemplative mode that Rodin had made the defining sculptural language of the age, the mode of the Thinker, the seated figure given wholly over to the labor of thought. Where Rodin's subject is universal, Borglum's is particular and human, Lincoln alone in the garden with the weight of the Civil War upon him.
The debt was one Borglum acknowledged throughout his life. He came to sculpture in Paris in the early 1890s, training at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts, and it was there that he entered the circle of Auguste Rodin, becoming a frequent presence in the older sculptor's studio and forming a friendship that endured until Rodin's death in 1917. Rodin's example marked his work permanently, in its psychological depth and its modeled, light-catching surfaces. Writing in 1918, Borglum judged Rodin "the most creative force in modern art," a sculptor who had, in his estimation, modeled himself out of mere craftsmanship into an intense and philosophizing power.
The rich brown patina deepens the nuanced surface modeling, catching light across the coat folds and the planes of the face and lending warmth to a composition that depends on subtlety for its effect.
Borglum's engagement with Lincoln was lifelong. In 1908, he completed a marble bust of the president, now in the crypt of the United States Capitol, an early mark of his commitment to Lincoln's likeness and legacy. Decades later, he would carve Lincoln on an unprecedented scale as one of the four presidents at Mount Rushmore. Seated Lincoln stands as the intimate counterpart to those heroic undertakings, revealing Borglum not only as a sculptor of national symbols but as an interpreter of individual character.
Provenance: Private collection, California.
Condition: Very good overall. The bronze retains a rich original brown patina throughout. The signature on the bench top is clear and legible. The foundry is stamped GORHAM CO. FOUNDERS, with casting number Q501, to the underside. Minor wear consistent with age and honest use. No restorations noted.
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