Abraham Lincoln

Lorado Taft praised Daniel Chester French as “the dean of American sculptors.” French specialized in large-scale marble statues, private memorials, and portrait busts. Here the sculptor captured Abraham Lincoln in a difficult hour of decision, and the president’s expression is more serious and thoughtful than in French’s earlier bronze of the standing Lincoln (1984.1130). This bronze is a reduced version of the full-size statue in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., which French worked on with the architect Henry Bacon. French’s brother, William M. R. French, was the first director of the Art Institute, serving from 1879 to 1914.