Lot 53
[Lincoln, Abraham] Plaster Life Mask by Clark Mills, 1865. 11 x 7½ x 8½". Bronze color. Signed on top of the head, "Abraham Lincoln / Clark Mills / 1865." Mills (1815-1883)- made his life mask of Lincoln on February 11, 1865, the day before Lincoln's 56th birthday and two months before his assassination. Mills' life mask was the second one made of Lincoln. Leonard Volk made the first one in April 1860, before Lincoln received the Republican nomination for president. Mills' mask reflects the toll taken on Lincoln by the Civil War. It shows Lincoln's entire head, and not just the face, as Volk's does.
Lincoln's secretary, John Hays, compared the two masks and described the changes wrought by five years: "…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."
Estimated Value $500 - 1,000.
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| Realized $3,600 |
