When W.F.K. Travers’s 9-foot-tall painting of Abraham Lincoln was first unveiled to America at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, it stood alongside Gilbert Stuart’s “Lansdowne Portrait” of George Washington—and together, the likenesses of America’s two most esteemed presidents stunned viewers.
The oil-on-canvas portrait of Lincoln was painted from life in 1865, mere months before his assassination, and remains one of only three known life-sized paintings of the 16th president. Several times, Congress debated purchasing the painting for display in the Capitol, until eventually it was acquired by the Rockefeller family and faded into history.
But now, roughly 147 years after the two paintings were first displayed together, Lincoln’s portrait has been returned to Washington’s side at the National Portrait Gallery thanks to the generous, long-term loan of the Hartley Dodge Foundation and its founder, Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge….