Abraham Lincoln
Cast of Face and Hands, 1860
Leonard Wells Volk (1828-1895)
Bronze
Leonard Wells Volk was a cousin of Stephen A. Douglas and a sculptor. He made casts of Lincoln’s face on March 31, 1860 in Chicago between court sessions where Lincoln was counsel in the famous Sandbar case, a dispute over lands north of the Chicago River. Volk put quills in Lincoln’s nose to permit breathing and then applied wet plaster to his face, an operation which took half an hour. After the plaster had set Lincoln, gradually worked the mask off, pulling a few hairs from his temple. The pain made his eyes water. Later, he commented that “the process was anything but agreeable.” After the settings, as the likeness emerged from the clay, Lincoln remarked “there’s the animal himself.”
These casts of Lincoln’s hand were made from the original by Leonard Wells Volk which is in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. About a week after Lincoln was nominated for President at the Republican Convention held in Chicago May 19, 1860, Volk went to Springfield to cast Lincoln’s hands. Volk requested Lincoln hold a stick in order to define the veins and lines of the hand. Lincoln went to his woodshed and returned to the dining room whittling a broom handle. Volk remarked that the edges did not need such careful whittling. “Oh, well,” said Lincoln, “I thought I would like to have it nice.”
