Abraham Lincoln

On May 26, 1860, the illustrated newspaper Harper’s Weekly presented its readers with a large-scale portrait of Abraham Lincoln, who had secured the Republican Party’s nomination for president only a week earlier. Newspapers at that time lacked the technology to publish photographic images. For this reason, Harper’s Weekly relied on one of its artists to produce an engraving of Lincoln—based on Mathew Brady’s photograph—that could be printed along with the paper’s text. The publication enjoyed a circulation estimated at 200,000 in 1860, ensuring that Lincoln’s portrait and its “PHOTOGRAPHED BY BRADY” credit line would reach a vast audience.