Abraham Lincoln

George Grey Barnard was commissioned to create an 11 foot statue of Abraham Lincoln for Lytle Park in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1917. This statue commemorated the centenary of Lincoln’s birth and was inspired by Leonard Wells Volk’s life mask of Lincoln without a beard. After this commission he continued to explore Lincoln’s character and created a number of other images including a similar example at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc. no. 29.161). Barnard was also a collector of medieval art and artifacts, and his collection was the basis for The Cloisters, now a part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.