The Fathers and Saviors of Our Country: A Presidential Sale

15 1/2 x 11 in. Original pencil and gouache illustration signed by Tobin at lower right-hand corner. Matted and framed. Overall, 19 x 24 in. Unexamined out of frame.

Abraham Lincoln: The Man was completed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1887 and unveiled with great fanfare in Chicago's Lincoln Park, with over 10,000 people in attendance, including the president's grandson, Abraham Lincoln II. The sculpture was immediately hailed as a great artistic achievement and even served as a model for Daniel Chester French when designing his own sculpture for the Lincoln Memorial. It is estimated that in its first three years of existence, over a million people visited the statue.

Edwin Booth's first visit to Chicago after the statue's unveiling came in the spring of 1890, with the dual purpose of a theatrical engagement and to record himself performing passages from Hamlet and Othello at the request of his daughter, Edwina. During this visit, Booth visited the Lincoln statue in the early hours of the morning. A witness to the event, popularly believed to be future playwright George Middleton, recalled:

"When I was a boy, I lived in Chicago near Lincoln Park. Once when Edwin Booth was playing in the city, I went with another boy to hear Hamlet. I was permitted to spend the night at my friend's house but went home for breakfast. At that early hour Lincoln park was deserted, but as I drew near Saint-Gaudens’ great statue of Lincoln, I saw a carriage approach... It stopped before the statue, the door opened and out stepped Edwin Booth. Curious to see what would happen, I stepped behind a clump of shrubbery where I might watch, unobserved. The great actor stood for a moment before the wonderful bronze, with his head bared. Then he took a rose from his buttonhole and laid [it] at the base of the statue. He entered the carriage and was driven away, utterly unconscious that the incident had been witnessed by one who would ever after cherish its memory.”