President Lincoln 1887

Winslow Homer made this small engraving, depicting President Lincoln, General Grant, and Lincoln’s son Tad, sometime during the Civil War. Its material is very much of its time: a mass-reproducible image, likely intended for a periodical. Homer was trained as a lithographer's apprentice, so he had first-hand experience of the industrialization of image-making. This background gave him a keen awareness of how the circulation of images in print could shape public opinion. The print is humble but it would have been widely disseminated. Consider the amount of labor and resources involved in producing and circulating such an image. From the engraver to the printer to the distributors, countless hands were involved in bringing this image to the masses. It speaks to the rise of a visual culture fueled by industrial capitalism. Ultimately, this modest engraving reflects the complex interplay of art, industry, and society in 19th-century America, showing how even a seemingly simple image can carry profound social and political weight.