Presidential Painting

A painting of a young Abraham Lincoln, reported to have been on display at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, was unveiled on February 9, 2018, at the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.

The Young Abraham Lincoln, a 56-by-85-inch oil painting by William Morton Jackson Rice (1854-1922), depicts Lincoln sitting in front of a tree he has just chopped down. The buckskin-clad youth is shown reading a book with a small meal set on a red cloth handkerchief at his side. The Rice painting sold at auction in 2014 for $4,500.

The Peoria (IL) Journal Star reports that “the painting had traveled the world, going from Paris in 1889 to the legendary 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and to the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 until it came into the hands of conservation philanthropist Louis Moore Bacon, who had the painting restored and re-framed before donating it.”

We have been unable to find any references about this painting being on display at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and so would welcome any information from readers about which building it may have hung in.

The painting will hang for the rest of 2018 in the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (112 N. Sixth St., Springfield).