Abraham Lincoln (Healy)

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Abraham Lincoln (Healy) is a 1869 oil-on-canvas portrait by George Peter Alexander Healy of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. The painting shows Lincoln alone and thoughtful, leaning forward with his elbow on his knee and his head in his hand. Healy based this pose on his earlier work The Peacemakers, which shows Lincoln during a Civil War strategy session in 1865.

Lincoln sat for Healy in August 1864. Healy began sketches to make the portrait. After Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, Healy created The Peacemakers in 1868. In 1869 Healy made a new portrait that focuses only on Lincoln, removing the other generals, and he painted it in Paris.

On March 3, 1869, Congress authorized a portrait of Lincoln to hang in the White House. Healy sent his work to Washington hoping it would be chosen, but President Ulysses S. Grant selected a more formal portrait by William F. Cogswell instead.

Robert Todd Lincoln bought Healy’s portrait and said, “I have never seen a portrait of my father which is to be compared with it in any way.” The painting stayed with Lincoln’s family, passing to his daughter Mamie Lincoln Isham, with the plan that it would someday go to the White House. It entered the White House collection after Isham’s death in 1938 and now hangs in the State Dining Room.

First Lady Lady Bird Johnson named it as one of her favorites in the White House. President Nixon moved it, but President Ford later had it moved back to its long-time place. Reproductions of the painting hang in the Illinois Governor’s Mansion and in the Minnesota House of Representatives chamber behind the speaker’s chair.