President Lincoln With Tad Photograph Taken February 9, 1864 by Anthony Berger For Mathew Brady

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Aug 24, 2019

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• Lot Description
  Abraham Lincoln Related
  Albumen Photograph of President Lincoln With Tad Taken February 9, 1864 by Anthony Berger For Mathew Brady
  February 9, 1864 Civil War Period, Albumen Photograph, President Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad, taken by Anthony Berger For Mathew Brady, the only close-up Photograph showing Lincoln wearing spectacles, O-93, Fine.
  Rarely encountered large Albumen Photograph of President Lincoln with son Tad, taken February 9, 1864 by Anthony Berger For Mathew Brady. This Oval Albumen Photograph shows Abraham Lincoln seated, facing right, looking at a photo album with his son Tad, standing to the President's left, facing front, measuring 7.5" x 5.25" placed on a 10 x 8" cardstock frame. A 2 U.S. Revenue stamp on the blank verso has a handwritten "1865" date cancel. The outer cardstock frame has roughness with several fine splits reinforced long ago with small pieces of tape on the blank reverse and has small edge chips, which do not touch the photograph itself and could simply be matted out to hide. The original photograph was taken by Anthony Berger in the Mathew Brady studio in Washington, D.C. on February 9, 1864. O-93 is an image of Lincoln produced during the February 9, 1864 Lincoln sitting. Berger shot Lincoln seated in his famous "Lincoln chair" once used by Lincoln when he was in the House of Representatives, looking at a photo album with his son Tad standing next to him peering down at the book. It represents the "only close-up of (Abraham Lincoln) wearing spectacles." The image was extremely popular and was produced in quantity when Lincoln was assassinated. This is the only close-up photograph showing Lincoln wearing spectacles. After Berger left Brady's studio, he copyrighted and sold his own retouched version.
  Francis Carpenter and Anthony Berger probably first crossed paths in the 1854 to 1855 time period. From 1853 to 1855, Carpenter maintained a "portrait painter" studio on the second floor of the same 359 Broadway, New York City building in which the famous Mathew Brady occupied the top three floors.
  
  The 1855-56 Trow's Directory of New York City also places the artist Anthony (then known as Anton) Berger at the same address. Carpenter appears to have overlapped Berger's earliest tenure at 359 Broadway during the year 1855. That year also marks when Mathew Brady began advertising the use of a new revolutionary form of photography - the wet plate collodion process - which would soon overtake daguerreotypes and ambrotypes in popularity.
  
  Carpenter had made an appointment for Lincoln to engage in a sitting on that day with Anthony Berger at Brady's Photographic Gallery located several blocks from the White House. Lincoln's humorous tale about Scott's experience probably foreshadowed his own misgivings about appearing before the lens of a camera. As Ohio politician Donn Piatt recalled, Lincoln "had a face that defied artistic skill to soften or idealize." Carpenter, however, desired those portraits as studies of Lincoln to supplement the live sketches of Father Abraham he intended to create in the White House. Both were to serve him when he painted Lincoln's visage into his "First Reading" portrait.
  
  Anthony Berger was the cameraman responsible for capturing Lincoln in 5 poses at Brady's D.C. gallery on January 8, 1864. Each of those views appears to have been taken by a four lens camera. Although it is not known which Brady photographer recorded those views, by virtue of Anthony Berger's role as manager of the gallery it stands to reason that he played at least some role in their creation and likely shot them unless he was then away from Washington City.
  
  By 3 p.m. on February 9, 1864, Lincoln's Cabinet meeting had been adjourned and Carpenter joined Lincoln on the front portico steps of the White House to wait for a carriage to be brought up to take them, Mrs. Lincoln, and Tad Lincoln to Brady's gallery. But after a delay, Lincoln told Carpenter, "Well, we will not wait any longer for the carriage; it won't hurt you and me to walk down." Carpenter recounted that the walk "of a mile or more was made very agreeable and interesting to me by a variety of stories, of which Mr. Lincoln's mind was so prolific."
  
  We don't know exactly when Lincoln's photography session at Brady's gallery began, who assisted Anthony Berger, or how long it took to complete the session. In fact, Carpenter's contemporaneous reference in his diary only mentioned - "Got ambrotype of President at Brady's this P.M." Apparently F.B. Carpenter at that time didn't understand the difference between the making of a positive image ambrotype and a negative on a wet-plate collodion glass plate (Berger employed the latter of the two processes). It was only later in his 1866 memoirs, Six Months at the White House, that Carpenter expanded upon the visit and identified Berger as the cameraman on February 9th.
  
  We do know that Lincoln sat through seven poses in front of Anthony Berger's camera that day. Lloyd Ostendorf has labeled those views as O-88, O-89, O-90, O-91, O-92, O-93 and O-94 (See Charles Hamilton and Lloyd Ostendorf, Lincoln in Photographs: An Album of Every Known Pose, rev. ed. (Dayton, Ohio: Morningside, 1985), pp. 190-95. We also know that the process involved in preparing a glass plate for an exposure had to occur shortly before its use and required about 5 minutes of time, followed by another 5 minutes to complete the development of each specific negative shortly thereafter. Thus, even assuming that Berger was assisted by someone who worked on creating the plates as quickly as possible and a second person who focused solely upon their development, it is likely that Lincoln's session lasted at least an hour by taking into account the time necessary to pose him, to evaluate the natural light filtering into the studio through the skylights, and for other related delays.
  
  O-93 is an image of Lincoln produced during the February 9, 1864 Lincoln sitting. Berger shot Lincoln seated in his famous "Lincoln chair" - once used by Lincoln when he was in the House of Representatives - looking at a photo album with his son Tad standing next to him peering down at the book. It represents the "only close-up of [Abraham Lincoln] wearing spectacles" and "was issued in huge quantities in many variations, with and without Brady's permission." In fact, after Berger left Brady's employ, he copyrighted and began offering for sale his own retouched version of O-93 (below) shortly after Lincoln's assassination.
  
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