Abraham Lincoln Carte-de-Visite Photo By Mathew Brady of Which Lincoln Said "I Look Most Like That One"

c. January 8, 1864

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Abraham Lincoln Carte-de-Visite Photo By Mathew Brady of Which Lincoln Said "I Look Most Like That One"
Carte de Visite
1 page | SMC 1694

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      Background

      Of this partially opaque vignette portrait made from one of the five Matthew Brady photographs taken in Washington on January 8, 1864, Lincoln said: “I don’t know that I have any favorite portrait of myself; but I have thought that if I looked like any of the likenesses of me that have been taken, I look most like that one.”
       
      Before television, before radio, before even, the daily use of photography itself, Lincoln realized the political importance of his image: a Western Everyman, rawboned, striking but unhandsome, and instantly recognizable. Lincoln sat for his photo some forty times, and his unmistakable visage graced thousands upon thousands of carte-de-visites – 4 by 2 ½ inch trade cards on which a 3 ½ by 2 ¼ inch image was affixed – like the one he signed for an admirer, here.
      Signed Photo (“A. Lincoln”), being a carte-de-visite by Matthew Brady, Washington D.C., January 8, 1864. Hamilton & Ostendorf, O-87A
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      Page 1 transcript
      A. LINCOLN.

      Brady     Washington

      Page 2/2

      Page 2 transcript
      BRADY'S

      IONAL [sic] PHOTOGRAPHIC

      PORTRAIT GALLERI [sic]

      Broadway & Tenth Street,

      NEW YORK, 

      &

      No. 352 Pennsylvania Av. Washing[sic] D.[sic]