Sale 2486, Part I - The Harold Holzer Collection of Lincolniana, September 27, 2018

It is hard to remember a time when I did not collect Lincolniana, and when I was not in pursuit of materials that informed and inspired my career-long research into the Lincoln image. But I do recall purchasing a Lincoln autograph when barely out of my teens—a small envelope “franked” by then-Congressman Abraham Lincoln and addressed to the Commissioner of Pensions. That’s the acquisition that started it all. Ultimately—that is, in 1971, at the ripe old age of 22—I began focusing on engravings and lithographs. These very images once adorned family parlors to express reverence for the presidential candidate, president, author of the Emancipation Proclamation, and slain martyr to the Union. Originally, I wanted simply to collect evocative historical materials that could decorate our own home. In pursuit of the best examples, my wife and I combed through antique shops, fairs, and flea markets throughout the Northeast. We found superb examples everywhere. One of my earliest purchases (thank goodness) inspired my first scholarly inquiry into the field of Lincoln iconography. It was a lithograph of the Lincoln family by a Philadelphia artist named Anton Hohenstein, housed in a beautiful gold-gesso frame. A few weeks after buying it, I was shocked to discover a photo in Life Magazine showing President Nixon “relaxing” (dressed in a suit and tie) on an easy chair in his White House study—the very same Lincoln Family print hanging above his head. Well, not quite the same. The White House version boasted a similar design, but a different face on Mr. Lincoln (based on another photo). The revelation stimulated my lifelong effort to explore the nature of nineteenth century prints: their political, commercial, and artistic origins, and their impact on period audiences. At that point, my collecting merged into historical research. The results were published in my first article, for the journal Lincoln Herald , in 1974—“Lincoln’s Print Doctor”—a study of the revisions printmakers routinely imposed to update their work, improve their hasty designs, or steal each other’s ideas. My Hohenstein, it turned out, owed a debt to photographers Wenderoth & Taylor and Alexander Gardner, not to mention a tradition of depicting presidential families that dates back to George and Martha Washington. Many articles followed, and eventually, in 1984, the book The Lincoln Image (with my friends and coauthors Mark E. Neely, Jr. and Gabor Boritt), followed over the years by The Confederate Image, The Union Image, The Lincoln Family Album, and Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: The Civil War in Art . Before long the hosts who introduced me at banquets and lectures began describing me as “The Prince of Prints.” Unfortunately, my elevation soon inhibited my collecting; I found that prices began soaring, with dealers now quoting my own books to justify “print inflation.” HAROLD HOLZER ON COLLECTING LINCOLNIANA