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NOW HE BELONGS TO THE AGES
     
 
"Now He Belongs To The Ages"

"Now He Belongs To The Ages"
President Abraham Lincoln
Image Size 11" x 15"
Release Date: February 2001
Edition size 500: 50 A/P: 25 P/P

Price: Regular Edition of 500: $140.00 Unframed Plus $10.00 Flat Shipping:


Price: Regular Edition of 500: $300.00 Handsomely and Professionally Framed Plus $40.00 Shipping:




My portrait, titled “Now He Belongs To The Ages” intends to present Lincoln as he looked at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg and the Gettysburg Address. The portrait was created by referring to six photographs, taken between 1863-1865 by Matthew Brady, Alexander Gardner and Anthony Berger.

A description by an anonymous British writer, published in the New York Sunday Mercury on June 1, 1862, does little to flatter the President.

“To say that he is ugly is nothing; to add that his figure is grotesque, is to convey no adequate impression. Fancy a man 6 feet high and thin out of proportion.....with a long scraggy neck, and a chest too narrow for the great arms at his side. Add to this figure a head, coconut shaped and somewhat too small for such a stature, covered with rough uncombed and uncomable hair, that stands out in every direction at once: a face furrowed, wrinkled and indented as though it had been scarred by vitriol: a high narrow forehead, and sunk deep beneath bushy eyebrows; two bright, somewhat dreamy eyes that seem to gaze through you without looking at you; a few irregular blotches of black, bristly hair in the place where beard and whiskers out to grow; a close-set, thin lipped, stern mouth, with two rows of large, white teeth and a nose and ears which have been taken by mistake from a head of twice the size.” The writer then goes on to describe Lincoln’s outward character traits when he concludes with, “Add to all of this an air of strength, physical as well as moral, and a strange look of dignity coupled with all this grotesqueness, and you will have the impression left upon me by Abraham Lincoln.”

Lincoln’s friend and Law partner in Illinois, William H. Herndon also left a most vivid description of Lincoln’s physical appearance:
“He was not a pretty man by any means- nor was he an ugly one, he was a homely looking man. Mr. Lincoln’s head was long and tall, his forehead was narrow but high. His ears were extremely large and ran out at almost right angles from his head. His hair was dark - almost black and lay floating where fingers or the winds left it, piled up at random. His cheek bones were high- sharp and prominent. His nose was large, long and blunt and a little awry toward the right eye. His eye brows, heavy and jutting out, cropped out like a huge rock on the brow of a hill. His face was long- sallow, cadaverous, shrunk, shriveled, wrinkled and dry. His cheeks were leathery and flabby, falling in loose folds at places, looking sorrowful and sad.”

Herndon goes on to describe a wonderful intangible, an illusive aspect of Lincoln that made him so special. “When those little gray eyes and face were lighted up by the inward soul on fires of emotion, then it was that all those apparently ugly or homely features sprang into organs of beauty. Sometimes it did appear to me that Lincoln was just fresh from the hands of his creator.”

At the American Anti-slavery Society in Philadelphia in December of 1863, Frederick Douglass recounted a meeting with Lincoln where he described him less by his appearance and only by his moral character and demeanor.

“Perhaps you would like to know how the president of the United States received a black man at the white house. I will tell you how he received me- just as you have seen one gentleman receive another; with a hand and a voice well balanced between a kind cordiality and a respectful reserve.
Now you will want to know how I was impressed by him. He impressed me as being just what every one of you have been in the habit of calling him- an honest man. I never met with a man, who, on the first blush, impressed me more entirely with his sincerity, with his devotion to his country, and with his determination to save it at all hazards."


These written descriptions and recollections helped me to create what I feel is a special portrait of Lincoln, by injecting them into my own interpretation of the images observed in the photographs. The exacting toll that the stress of the war had taken upon his facial features was emphasized. Lincoln was only 54 in 1863. The pressures of his office have prematurely aged him and ravaged his appearance, he looks worn and tired. Yet there is a strong sense of quiet dignity and pride in the way he holds himself. His eyes are the focal point, accentuated to express that special inner fire and emotion described by Herndon. They also reveal a tinge of sadness and compassion over the horrifying loss of life and destruction the war was wreaking upon our Nation.

President Lincoln did not live to see the reunited country and cherished lasting peace he struggled so mightily for. He was assassinated on April 14 by John Wilkes Booth while viewing the play “ Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater. Mortally wounded, he was carried across the street to the Petersen house, where doctors struggled for hours to save his life. At about 6.45 AM on April 15, 1865, President Lincoln succumbed to his wound. In an adjoining parlor, Secretary of War Edward Stanton whispered the words, “Now He Belongs To The Ages”.

President Lincoln belongs to all of us. Arguably the greatest President our Nation has known, he nobly guided us through the bloodiest and most traumatic period of time in the history of our then young Country. This portrait is meant to pay tribute to the 16th President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln; the Great Emancipator and author of the 13th Ammendment, whose words and deeds we will “long remember”. “Now He Belongs To He Ages”!

Paul R. Martin III
May, 2000

“When those little gray eyes and face were lighted up by the inward soul on fires of emotion, then it was that all those apparently ugly or homely features sprang into organs of beauty. Sometimes it did appear to me that Lincoln was just fresh from the hands of his creator.”





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