Updated at 10:16 pm on April 4: This has been sold.
A carte de visite of Abraham Lincoln and his son
Captioned "President Lincoln and his son Thaddeus. The last Photograph the President sat for."
Published by G.F. Bouve & Co. [from Gardner's negative].
This portrait was one of five taken at Alexander Gardner's Washington, DC studio, on February 5, 1865, in what would be the final formal studio session Lincoln would ever sit for.
This example has the "Sylvan" artistic background added of the unfinished Washington Monument and the Potomac River.
In a handmade frame that was designed and built for this CDV. It is designed so that the back can be removed and the CDV can be taken out. (There is no glass covering the CDV.) The CDV is mounted on brown fabric typical of that timeperiod and is held in place by archival quality photo corners.
Image size: 2.5" x 4"
Frame size: 5.25"W x 7"H x 1.25"D
Shipping: $20. Will be sent via UPS with a signature required.
Photographing Lincoln
"Abraham Lincoln was the first American president to use photography for political purposes. During his first presidential campaign in 1860, some thirty-five portraits of the candidate by the photographer Mathew Brady were circulated throughout the country. The immediacy of a photograph created a sense of intimacy between viewer and subject (or voter and candidate) that few painted portraits could achieve—particularly in the mid-nineteenth century, when the medium was still a novelty for many Americans. Acknowledging its power to move the populace, Lincoln gave portrait photography credit for his victory. 'Make no mistake,' he said. 'Brady made me President!'
"Gardner had been one in a team of photographers employed by Brady to follow the Union troops and make a visual record of the Civil War. He began to work independently in 1863, when he established his own studio in Washington, D.C., and became known for his portraits of uniformed soldiers setting off for war.
Source: Humanities – Picturing America
Historical background on CDVs
"The carte de visite (French: [kaʁt(ə) də vizit(ə)], English: 'visiting card', abbr. 'CdV', pl. cartes de visite) was a format for a small photograph that was patented in Paris by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero.
"Each photograph was the size of a visiting card . . . and were commonly traded among friends and visitors in the 1860s. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors. . . .
"It was the success of the carte de visite that led to photography's institutionalization."
Source: Wikipedia
