Seth Kaller, Inc.

Leonard Volk created the first bust of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 after Lincoln sat for castings of his face in Volk’s Chicago office and of his hands at his Springfield home. Volk created this statuette as part of a monument he designed for the city of Rochester, New York, some thirty years later.

[ABRAHAM LINCOLN]. Leonard W. Volk. Lincoln Holding the Emancipation Proclamation, patinated plaster figure, Milwaukee, WI: C. Hennecke and Co., 1891. Base engraved “Copyright by Leonard W. Volk, 1891.” Bearing C. Hennecke and Co. tag. 11 in. in diameter; 35 in. tall.

Inventory #26751       Price: $7,500

In March 1881, citizens of Rochester formed a committee, with an executive committee of fifteen members, including John A. Reynolds (1830-1921) as chairman, to erect a suitable memorial to the Civil War veterans of the area. During the war, Reynolds had been Chief of Artillery of the XX Corps under General William T. Sherman. In September 1889, the committee commissioned Volk, who made “Lincoln Holding the Emancipation Proclamation” a part of his forty-two-foot Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument. The monument features a central shaft of Vermont granite with the nine-and-a-half-foot bronze figure of Lincoln atop it. The shaft is surrounded at the corners by shorter pillars with bronze figures symbolizing the infantry, cavalry, artillery, and navy. Panels on the four sides of the main shaft depict the land battles at Fort Sumter, Gettysburg, and Appomattox Court House, and the naval battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia. The total cost for the monument was $26,000.[1]

On Memorial Day, May 30, 1892, a parade of 10,000 people moved through Rochester to Washington Square Park for the unveiling and dedication of the monument. President Benjamin Harrison and New York Governor Roswell P. Flower delivered speeches, and abolitionist and civil rights leader Frederick Douglass was in attendance. President Harrison’s brief speech emphasized unity and sectional reconciliation but failed to mention either slavery or abolitionism.[2]

C. Hennecke and Co. of Chicago and Milwaukee specialized in reproduction statuary and ornaments. Caspar Hennecke (1833-1892) was born in Westphalia, Germany, and became a locksmith. He immigrated to Milwaukee in 1853 and worked as an agent of a Cincinnati firm until 1865, when he established his own terra cotta business. His business grew rapidly, and he was recognized for the consistently high quality of his plaster works.

In 1890, Volk sold to the C. Hennecke Co. the exclusive right to make or manufacture in “plaster, bronze, marble or other material” for the next fifteen years his Lincoln life mask, the casts of Lincoln’s hands, the 32-inch statuette he created for the bronze statue that would surmount the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in Rochester, and a 31-inch statuette of Stephen A. Douglas, a study for the bronze statue on Douglas’s monument in Chicago. In 1891, Hennecke offered copies of this statuette to the public for $12.[3]

Leonard Wells Volk (1828-1895) was born in New York and followed his father’s trade as a marble cutter in Massachusetts. In 1848, Volk opened an artist’s studio in St. Louis, Missouri. His wife’s cousin, Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln’s famous debate opponent, supported Volk’s travel to Rome for additional study from 1855 to 1857. When he returned to the United States, Volk settled in Chicago, where he helped found the Chicago Academy of Design, the precursor to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the spring of 1860, Abraham Lincoln sat for Volk while attending court in Chicago. In mid-May 1860, Volk presented a completed cabinet bust to the Lincolns in Springfield and asked to cast Lincoln’s hands. Volk made several large monumental sculptures, including the tomb of Stephen A. Douglas in Chicago; the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in Rochester, New York; and statues of Lincoln and Douglas in the Illinois State Capitol.

Provenance
Louise Taper Collection
Ralph Newman, Chicago, September 24, 1990