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THE MANY IMAGES OF LINCOLN
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And now the tradition continues, Lincoln sculpture itself has enjoyed something of a revival in recent years, as vivified by the national television exposure given to Lily Tolpo’s statue of Lincoln and Douglas in debate, unveiled in Freeport in 1992, and given renewed attention during the 1993 C-Span broadcasts of the debate recreations throughout Illinois,
James Nance entered this rarefied pantheon the hard way: through painstaking research, and by doing what no artist had attempted before — two simultaneous sculptures of two astonishingly different Abraham Lincoln’s.
My project had several false beginnings," Nance admits. I first thought it would be a simple matter to model a portrait only of President Lincoln from photographs in numerous books." But book illustrations did not offer sufficient variety, and Nance began writing to institutional repositories like The Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, and the Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield, and before long he had amassed a large collection of photographic poses. He hung so many pictures around his home, he laughs, that he soon began to see Lincoln’s face in his dreams — which only confused matters more. "I began to realize," he says, "that in almost every photo session, Mr. Lincoln looked like a different person." Here, he felt, was the essence of the problem David Donald had cited in the essay that first inspired his Lincoln project. So Nance next undertook pilgrimages to every important site associated with Lincoln’s life (in order to experience first hand his life’s surroundings"). Still, the Lincoln he wished to model remained elusive, even remote. Finally. Nance turned to the same source to which fellow sculptors had been referring for a century-and-a-quarter: the life mask by Leonard Wells Volk.
Here again, however, the path proved more complicated than Nance envisaged. "I ordered four different Volk masks from a variety of commercial sources, only to find that they were all highly distorted from years of making molds of molds of molds. One company sent me a mask which they advertised as a death mask! It turned out to be only a Volk reproduction which looked so bad it seemed like a death mask. These copies were a great disservice to Volk since they bore little resemblance to his work."
Working in water-based clay, using his fingers rather than tools (to be "more in touch with the clay"), and using misting spray to keep his model soft as he began modeling it in large sweeping motions with his nimble fingers, Nance slowly began to give life to his own mud head" of the president he so admired.
But even with all of this concentrated study." Nance recalls, "I eventually became frustrated and dissatisfied with my portrait of the President, I thought it was too stiff, too formal, and lacked feeling." Nance’s experience had convinced him, ironically, that he could not portray Lincoln the President without also portraying Lincoln before he became president. "The President does not exist in a vacuum," Nance maintains. "Lincoln’s regard for the constitution, his respect for the law, his moral convictions, and his determination were all developed in the prairie of Illinois."
So Nance abruptly decided to store his sculpture-in-progress and turn to an entirely new theme: Lincoln the attorney, the younger man who he now strongly fell could not be regarded as a mere "footnote" to his later, more exalted life as commander-in-chief and emancipator. The sculptor returned to Fort Wayne, where once again the Lincoln Museum gave him permission to make a mold of a life mask — this time its pristine, early copy of an 1860 Volk, a casting so fine Nance could even detect the pores in Lincoln’s weather beaten skin.
Armed with this new model, which to Nance seemed almost as compelling and vivid as the living Lincoln who had sat for Volk In 1860, the sculptor turned with a vengeance to his new theme, sculpting a Lincoln in shirtsleeves and suspenders as he might have looked in a hot Illinois courtroom on any summer day in the late 1850’s, the face expressing anticipation, the shoulders tilted slightly. just as If the subject waits to make an objection, begin a summation, or hear the verdict of a jury.
Now Nance took this finished work and stored it out of view, and returned with new anticipation to the Presidential work he had discarded in such frustration. Suddenly, almost magically, the later Lincoln, too, sprang to life under his touch. "It was like I had to walk before I could run." he remembers. The revised presidential Lincoln does not lean forward as does the pre-White House attorney; he leans slightly back in quiet confidence, eyes penetrating, face sad but commanding, a look on his face of a man who seems prepared to meet his destiny." (Viewers who wonder why Lincoln’s hair is parted on different sides in the two portraits should rest assured that the Presidential Lincoln did, on at least one important occasion — the 1864 photographic sitting that produced the $5 bill portrait — part his hair on the side Nance chose for his own portrait of the White House Lincoln.)
Nance was not yet prepared to call his works complete, even after six long months of hands-on labor. Now he cast bronze proofs, photographed them, and sent prints to Lincoln experts throughout the nation, asking for their frank assessments and suggestions. Nance was amused — as well as grateful — when one correspondent pointed out that the suspenders on his lawyer bust showed a type of clasp that hadn’t even been invented in Lincoln’s day.
All in all, Nance found the critiques helpful — and also encouraging. He went back to work. Ultimately, Nance made some radical revisions to the presidential portrait, tearing away at his facial muscles to make him appear thinner and more haggard than in his first draft. "I tried," he says, "to more accurately depict the ravages of time and office." Finally, he was ready to design a patina, and months more of sandblasting and experimentation ensued before Nance was satisfied with the deep bronze-like hues his statues now affect along with their occasional touches of color, Viewers will find a bit of red, for instance, in Lincoln’s suspenders — "an artistic statement," Nance concedes, "designed to reinforce his humanity. The deep color represents the red of blood subdued by the colors of time."
On Lincoln’s 186th birthday, only two months ago, Nance displayed his riveting dual bronze portraits side by side at the headquarters hotel (for the annual dinner meeting of the Abraham Lincoln Association, where hundreds of the sixteenth president’s most devoted admirers from around the nation met the sculptor and viewed his work first-hand. The display models themselves were quickly purchased at the now-established cost of $8,500 for each set in the limited edition of 35 by Frank J. Williams, who served for nine years as the Association’s president. Williams, who owns the largest private collection of Lincolniana In America, declared the Nance works "deeply moving and beautifully sculpted. I think they are absolutely wonderful, certainly ranking among the best produced this century, and I’m proud and delighted to add them to the Frank and Virginia Williams collection."
Says James Nance, the first sculptor ever to portray the pre-presidential and presidential Lincoln’s concurrently: "If a portrait is successful, it should offer more than a good likeness; it should represent the summation of the subject’s life as seen through the eyes and sensibilities of the artist. When a viewer appreciates a portrait or any work of art, that viewer is really appreciating the artist's personal vision and interpretation of the subject. I know that is a high-sounding ideal, but it’s still a goal to which every artist must strive."
Nance had to fall off a roof before striving toward that ideal in earnest. He had to supplement inspiration with perspiration, myth with research, and his long-held view of Lincoln the man of destiny with one equally strong of Lincoln the man of law. His dual sculptures of two Lincoln’s at two different crossroads of his life make a strong statement on this assassination anniversary that Lincoln continues to exist in vivid terms, but in different ways, in a American memory that still warmly embraces him,
The final Nance bronzes, each a life-size 26-inthes tall by 18 inches wide — and entitled Prairie Lawyer and Immortal Conscience — draw from the landmark works of the past, yet remain firmly rooted in a singular artistic vision of the present. "I hope that these dual portraits will contribute artistically to a more intimate understanding of Mr. Lincoln," says the artist modestly. Those who have seen the works have already concluded that they do. Nance refers to his long odyssey as my personal search for Lincoln’s spirit." Many observers feel he has not only found it — but recreated it — and not just once, but twice. Not even Leonard Wells Volk himself could lay such a claim.
