Volk Mask

Volk Mask - Inventory Number: POL 353

Abraham Lincoln Beardless Plaster "LIFE MASK" After Leonard Volk's Original Cast in 1860 Made Circa 1886.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN LIFE MASK, Plaster with height about 10.5", c. 1886 copy "without beard" made after Leonard Volk's original made in 1860 as Presidential Candidate, Very Fine.

A historic Abraham Lincoln LIFE MASK, made of Plaster, signed with information just below the chin on the reverse. There is a fine hairline crack running on the bridge of his nose to the left side of his nose, some minor rub wear.

This is the "beardless" Presidential Candidate Lincoln's Life Mask. It is a later copy of the original 51 year old Lincoln cast made by Leonard Volk in 1860. At that time it is reported that the plaster of the original cast hardened so fast that it was painful to pull it off of Lincoln's face! There were two different life masks created made but five years apart, both meant to bring viewers literally "face to face" with President Abraham Lincoln as he aged.

Producing life masks of famous figures was common in the 19th century. It involved applying wax or plaster to a subject in order to create a mold, which could then be reproduced using plaster or bronze. In 1886 sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, collectors Thomas B. Clarke and Erwin Davis, and the journalist Richard W. Gilder, together purchased the Original Plaster Casts to present as a donation to the Smithsonian Institution. To finance the donation, they sold Bronze and Plaster casts after Volk's originals, with the production supervised by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. This current example is whole, solid and unbroken making it an excellent example for display.

John Hay, who served as one of Abraham Lincoln's close White House Secretaries, noticed that Lincoln had ... "aged with great rapidity" during the Civil War. He said: "Under this frightful ordeal his demeanor and disposition changed -- so gradually that it would be impossible to say when the change began; but he was in mind, body, and nerves a very different man at the Second Inauguration from the one who had taken the Oath in 1861."

John Hay had seen both Lincoln life masks and remarked: "This change is shown with startling distinctness by two life-masks ... The first is a man of fifty-one, and young for his years. The face has a clean, firm outline; it is free from fat, but the muscles are hard and full; the large mobile mouth is ready to speak, to shout, or laugh; the bold, curved nose is broad and substantial, with spreading nostrils; it is a face full of life, of energy, of vivid aspiration...

The other is so sad and peaceful in its infinite repose that the famous sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens insisted, when he first saw it, that it was a death-mask. The lines are set, as if the living face, like the copy, had been in bronze; the nose is thin, and lengthened by the emaciation of the cheeks; the mouth is fixed like that of an archaic statue; a look as of one on whom sorrow and care had done their worst without victory is on all the features; the whole expression is of unspeakable sadness and all-sufficing strength. Yet the peace is not the dreadful peace of death; it is the peace that passeth understanding."

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Inventory Number: POL 353