A patinated bronze figure of Abraham Lincoln, standing bare-headed in a frock coat and holding the Emancipation Proclamation in his lowered right hand, the scroll incised with its title and with the signature A. Lincoln, raised on a stepped square base. Signed to the base Geo. E. Bissell and dated 1893, and stamped with the cachet of the Paris foundry E. Gruet Jeune, Fondeur, 44 bis Avenue de Châtillon, Paris. Height 17 inches (43 cm).
The model derives from Bissell's monumental standing Lincoln for the Scottish-American Soldiers Monument in the Old Calton Burial Ground, Edinburgh, unveiled on 21 August 1893. It was the first statue of Lincoln raised outside the United States, and it remains the only monument to the American Civil War outside America. A second monumental version was erected in 1902 at Clermont, Iowa. In the reduction, as on the monument, Lincoln holds the Emancipation Proclamation, the document that gives the figure its title.
The present bronze is the Paris cast, by the foundry of Edmond Gruet, known as E. Gruet Jeune, active from 1891 until 1904 at 44 bis Avenue de Châtillon, among the few Parisian founders of the period to practice the lost-wax method, and the founder of some of the best-known bronzes of Frederick MacMonnies. Bissell lived and worked in Paris through much of the 1880s and 1890s, and the Gruet casting belongs to those years, contemporary with the monument itself. The subject was afterward issued commercially by the Gorham Company of New York, and it is the Gorham casts that account for most of the models on the market; the Paris examples are encountered far less often, and this one retains the crisp definition of the face, hair, and incised proclamation associated with the Gruet casting.
The bronze retains a warm, dark brown patina of good tone, with wear consistent with age and handling. Signed, dated, and foundry-stamped as described. A formal condition report is available on request.
A patinated bronze figure of Abraham Lincoln, standing bare-headed in a frock coat and holding the Emancipation Proclamation in his lowered right hand, the scroll incised with its title and with the signature A. Lincoln, raised on a stepped square base. Signed to the base Geo. E. Bissell and dated 1893, and stamped with the cachet of the Paris foundry E. Gruet Jeune, Fondeur, 44 bis Avenue de Châtillon, Paris. Height 17 inches (43 cm).
The model derives from Bissell's monumental standing Lincoln for the Scottish-American Soldiers Monument in the Old Calton Burial Ground, Edinburgh, unveiled on 21 August 1893. It was the first statue of Lincoln raised outside the United States, and it remains the only monument to the American Civil War outside America. A second monumental version was erected in 1902 at Clermont, Iowa. In the reduction, as on the monument, Lincoln holds the Emancipation Proclamation, the document that gives the figure its title.
The present bronze is the Paris cast, by the foundry of Edmond Gruet, known as E. Gruet Jeune, active from 1891 until 1904 at 44 bis Avenue de Châtillon, among the few Parisian founders of the period to practice the lost-wax method, and the founder of some of the best-known bronzes of Frederick MacMonnies. Bissell lived and worked in Paris through much of the 1880s and 1890s, and the Gruet casting belongs to those years, contemporary with the monument itself. The subject was afterward issued commercially by the Gorham Company of New York, and it is the Gorham casts that account for most of the models on the market; the Paris examples are encountered far less often, and this one retains the crisp definition of the face, hair, and incised proclamation associated with the Gruet casting.
The bronze retains a warm, dark brown patina of good tone, with wear consistent with age and handling. Signed, dated, and foundry-stamped as described. A formal condition report is available on request.
Image 1 of 3
Image 2 of 3
Image 3 of 3
