LINCOLN PHOTOS VERSUS MINIATURE PAINTING

by Joelle Steele

Comparing faces in photos to faces in paintings can be challenging. In 2016, a miniature painting was provided to me by a fine art investigator who believed it may have been an early, romanticized portrait of Abraham Lincoln. I took one look at it and felt this was a waste of my time and the investigator's money. The miniature did not resemble Lincoln in any way at all. I have studied and compared Lincoln's face to numerous Lincoln wanna-be photos, and I know Lincoln's face when I see it. I even have a book that consists entirely of Lincoln photographs that I refer to when analyzing his photos. But, against my better judgment, the investigator and her client wanted to pursue the analysis.

So analyze it, I did. The Lincoln photographs I used for this comparison were the N.H. Shepherd photo taken in 1846 in Springfield, Illinois (aka the "Meserve 1" photo), and the Abraham M. Byers photo taken on May 7, 1858 in Beardstown, Illinois. They were the earliest known photograph of Lincoln and one taken several years prior to his death. They were also posed similarly to the man in the miniature. Here are the three images:

Left to right: miniature, Shepherd/Meserve photo, Byers photo.

I began by comparing and measuring the two Lincoln photographs to be sure they were of the exact same proportions, and they were. I then measured the miniature and compared it to the Lincoln photographs. As I expected, the miniature did not match the Lincoln photos at all.

In addition to the measurements and proportions having too great a difference for a match, these images show: 1) the left ear in the miniature does not match Lincoln's left ear; 2) the man in the miniature lacks the strong ramus (jaw line beginning under the ear) that Lincoln has; 3) Lincoln's nose turns up slightly at the end and the miniature man's does not; 4) Lincoln has deep set eyes and the man in the miniature doesn't; and 5) Lincoln has deep creases between his cheek and nose/mouth areas, and again the miniature man does not. If this miniature was really of Lincoln, then the artist must have been an extremely untalented portrait painter.

In addition to the face issues, there's the wardrobe. The collar of the man in the miniature (not visible in the picture above) is in a style from about 1812, when Lincoln would have been only about 3 years old at most (he was born in 1809).

But back to hard facts. All proportions must match from one face to another to have a match. The greatest allowable difference for any given facial feature to be a match is 0.5% (0.75% in non-photo media). In the comparison of the Lincoln photos with the miniature, the differences exceed this by 1.32% to 5.84%, and that absolutely rules out a match.

Because the two Lincoln faces in the photographs did not match the face in the miniature, it was possible, due to provenance, that the man in the miniature may have been a contemporary of Lincoln's. But provenance means nothing to me. I don't care if an image is hanging in a museum or came straight out of Mary Todd Lincoln's closet. Faces either match or they don't. However, I still went ahead and compared the miniature to photographs of known Lincoln friends and acquaintances. Again, nothing even close to a match.

The miniature is not and cannot be a portrait of Lincoln.