Kentucky Collection

LEONARD WELLS VOLK
(American, 1828-1895)

Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln, 1860
Bronze
Gift of Mrs. Hattie Bishop Speed 1929.26

Sculptor Leonard Wells Volk created this life mask of Abraham Lincoln the year before he became president of the United States. Volk first met Lincoln in Chicago during the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. When Lincoln returned to Chicago in 1860, he allowed Volk to make a plaster cast of his face. According to Volk’s own account of the experience, Lincoln remarked that, although he had modeled for daguerreotypes and photographs, he had “never sat before to sculptor or painter.”

To create the mask, Volk carefully covered Lincoln’s face with wet plaster, leaving openings for the eyes and nostrils. Once the plaster dried, the sitter leaned forward and carefully pealed it away from his face. “It hurt a little,” reminisced Volk in 1881, “as a few hairs of the tender temples pulled out with the plaster and made his eyes water.” Volk later used the plaster mold to cast this bronze sculpture