Sculptor’s lasting fame rests on Lincoln life mask

On a warm, breezy Saturday — March 31, 1860 — Chicago sculptor Leonard W. Volk met with his subject, Abraham Lincoln, in Volk’s fifth-floor home and studio.

The men had been introduced two years earlier during the Illinois Senate campaign and debates. Lincoln’s firm double-grasp handshake had impressed Volk. After some amiable conversation, Lincoln had promised that he would pose one day for the sculptor.

Now, while in Chicago on legal business, he had come to Volk’s workshop at 46 Portland Block, on the southeastern corner of Dearborn and Washington streets, three blocks west of Lake Michigan and one block east of the Cook County courthouse, to make good on his promise.

Recently returned from a triumphant speech he had delivered at Cooper Union in New York City and a whirlwind speaking tour of New England, the gangly Illinois lawyer and politician now found himself famous. No doubt Lincoln was pleased with a column that appeared in that day’s edition of the Chicago Tribune. A contributing piece from the Quincy Whig and Republican gushed with praise, proclaiming that the “INTELLECTUAL GIANT, honest Abraham Lincoln,” was its choice to be the Republican Party’s presidential standard-bearer.

“We confess that so great is our enthusiasm for the man, that whenever and wherever we hear his name, the first impulse is to give him three rousing cheers. His face, the sparkle of his honest eyes, the tone of his clarion-like voice, and his splendid talents, his honesty, simplicity of character, and backbone, are so well known, that we cannot add anything that will make all Illinoisans more enthusiastic for him than they are now.”

The newspaper account foreshadowed the image Americans would use to define Lincoln in subsequent generations. A portrait bust sculpted by Volk would reflect just how far the self-educated and self-made man had come in his 51 years.

A Douglas man

Ironically, the sculptor was related by marriage to Lincoln’s chief political rival, Stephen A. Douglas. In fact, Douglas had defrayed the cost of Volk’s academic training in Rome from 1855 to 1857. Rome, the sculptor said, was “the finest school for the advancement in the Art of Sculpture for the World.”

Volk’s kinship with Douglas was so strong that he named his son Stephen Arnold Douglas Volk. On a waist-high, columnlike pedestal in Volk’s studio sat a plaster portrait bust of the “Little Giant” draped in a Roman toga. Under the bust, on one of the chipped and shopworn modeling stands, were the tools of Volk’s trade, an assortment of modeling knives, loop tools, saws, calipers and mallets.

The musty, earthy odor of clay — the stuff of the sculptor’s craft — permeated the air. Small lumps of dried clay and hardened plaster littered the studio’s wood floor. Plaster dust produced a thin film that settled everywhere. In the corner sat a well-worn red velvet chairin which both Lincoln and Douglas, as well as other Civil War-era luminaries including William Seward and Ulysses S. Grant, would sit while visiting the studio.

Northern light streamed into the studio through a skylight cut into the fifth-floor attic ceiling, offering the artist the best and most diffuse natural light with which to work. Volk liked to wear an embroidered fez, complete with tassel. The 32-year-old sculptor gave the appearance of the beau ideal of a bohemian practitioner of the fine arts.

An odd face

To begin the process, a life mask needed to be created. The clean-shaven future president sat in a seat across from a mirror where he could watch the process unfold. Volk gingerly applied a light sheen of oil to what he called “the patient’s” face. Next he spread some clay on Lincoln’s forehead to keep his hair in place. Two quills were slipped up Lincoln’s nostrils so he could breathe.

Once the preparatory work was complete, the sculptor proceeded to cover his subject’s face with thick wet plaster. As the plaster cured, it got hotter and hotter, making it uncomfortable. An hour later, the plaster had set. Lincoln gingerly removed the mask himself.

“Being all in one piece, with both ears perfectly taken, it clung pretty hard,” Volk recalled, “as the cheekbones were higher than the jaws at the lobe of the ear. He bent his head low and took hold of the mold and worked it off,” With the mask, Lincoln pulled some hair from his eyebrows. As he did so, Lincoln’s eyes filled with tears, and he commented that “the process was anything but agreeable.”

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