Lot 534: 2 Meserve Photographs of Lincoln: Cracked Plate, Brady

Two (2) Abraham Lincoln photographs, his first and last known photographs as President. 1st item: Scarce copy of the “Cracked plate portrait”, also known as the final photograph of Abraham Lincoln, Meserve #100, circa 1932. From the last series of images taken of the president before his assassination. Matted and framed under glass in a molded giltwood frame. Sight: 9 1/2 in. H  x 7 1/4 in. W. Frame: 17 in. H x 15 in. W. Note: The original image (from which this photograph was printed) was made at Lincoln’s final sitting at Alexander Gardner’s studio in Washington, DC on Feb. 5, 1865*. The glass plate cracked when Gardner was developing the photographs and applied the emulsion. He pulled just one print before destroying the plate. Just over two months later, on April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was fatally shot by assassin John Wilkes Booth. When Gardner sold that original print in 1874 to sculptor Truman Bartlett, he reportedly told Bartlett it was the last photograph made at the sitting, making it the last known formal photograph of Lincoln. In 1905, Bartlett sold the print to F.H. Meserve, a collector, historian and author who published “The Photographs of Abraham Lincoln” (with Carl Sandburg, in 1944). Meserve made an unknown but limited number of prints from the original single print – including this one, which, according to the note en verso, dates to 1932 or earlier. The original photographic print pulled by Gardner is now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Other known Meserve copies are in the collection of the Morgan Library and Museum (c. 1912) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (c. 1911). *Lincoln’s last sitting with Gardner was previously thought to have occurred on April 9 or 10, 1865, but subsequent research has discovered the more likely date to be Feb. 5 (source: The White House Historical Association; University of Illinois Library Lincoln Collection). 2nd item: Copy of the first known photographic image of Abraham Lincoln as President, Meserve #38. Matted and framed under glass in a molded giltwood frame. Sight: 9 1/2 in. H  x 7 1/4 in. W. Frame: 17 in. H x 15 in. W. Note: Printed from the original negative (or from a negative made from the original negative) of an image taken at Matthew Brady’s studio in Washington, DC by staff cameraman Thomas Le Mere on April 17, 1863. 

PROVENANCE: The Collection of Deborah and Kent Vauclain Bissell, Sr., by descent from his grandfather, Dr. Austin Flint Morris (1868-1906) of New Jersey, a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, or his great-uncle, William Cullen Morris (1874-1975) of New York. Morris was a Vice President of Con Edison and engineer instrumental in the construction of the Astoria Tunnel. 

CONDITION: Both items very good condition.